THE POINT OF DEPARTURE

In Europe working conditions are undergoing a rapid transition. A re-structuring process is underway, affecting the lives of almost every working citizen and informing Western social and cultural identity. A desire to creatively interrogate this issue has brought together independent artists and companies from six European countries. The Story of Work will be a process of research, discussion and creative exchange between these artists, workers, organisations and individuals e.g. policy makers, trade unions.

THE OBJECTIVE

The Story of Work will explore working life in Europe at this unique point in history utilising the diversity of the participating artists and their cultural contexts. Through creative collaboration and research the project will explore the potential of art to act as a mediator raising cross-sector debate about the past, present and future of work. We aim to create a unique working model which might be used by other artists throughout Europe to engage with a variety of communities and issues affecting them.

Participation and CO-operation

Five independent groups of performing artists from Sweden, Finland, Denmark, UK and Norway in association with performance artists from Germany will unite to explore work and life in Europe. All artists involved share a passion for researching contemporary issues, transforming them into artistic expression and opening up a genuine dialogue with a new audience. The project will collect knowledge from all the participating countries and unite a range of artistic expressions including theatre, dance, performance, video art. This provides a dynamic to the work-in-progress as well as expanding our understanding of each others working methods and techniques. The public are our audience and our source material. Our engagement will be public and transparent throughout the process. The common language of the collaboration is English. Performances will use a mixture of languages.

Each group will be working nationally (and funded nationally) to realise a new piece of performance about work in their own country. These productions will be informed and guided by the trans-national collaboration of The Story of Work. Artists and experts from all participating groups will travel to support the national productions through workshops, seminars, and artistic input as needed.

The collaboration of The Story of Work will involve practical laboratory workshops, artistic brainstorming, dialogue between participating artists and reference groups (see below) and the creation of an interactive website.

RESEARCH. THE REFERENCE AND STEERING GROUPS

Original Research will be a major part of the work. It will be carried out as follows:

• to form a primary reference group from participant workers in each country, to find ways to involve them in the project and create a trans-national dialogue between these groups.
• to contact researchers within relevant fields of knowledge e.g. economics, political science, philosophy etc. and representatives of trade unions to create a secondary reference group
• to research and study the theme through papers, attendance of lectures and seminars.

The research will be conducted nationally but closely monitored and coordinated trans-nationally by the artistic steering group. This is essential as we strive to create a comparative exploration of national differences to be included in an overarching narrative of working practices in Europe. All materials will be translated and made available to all participants. A process of editing, fictionalising and creating a new narrative will be initialised.

Two steering groups will be formed from the practitioners involved - an artistic steering group to develop artistic strategy and decide on creative development and the other to deal with the practical process of production. The members of these groups will meet three times between June 2006 and June 2007. The artistic steering group will compile a collection of materials that incorporates text, music, set design, video as well as the results of the research of the individual working groups. Artists from different national groups will also meet individually to address specific questions in greater detail e.g. a meeting of video artists and writers to debate how verbatim testimony translates into fictional work.

The Laboratories

The three laboratories will be workshops involving the artists as well as members of the reference groups, representatives of unions, speakers, observers and the audience. Artistic approaches and developing ideas will be shared in a practical, process orientated working space. These will be supported by discursive forum through which experiential and theoretical research will be exchanged.

Laboratory 1 and 2

A minimum of four members of each participating group will meet in June 2006 in Riddarhyttan and in December 2006 in Helsinki to share the results of their research and develop the artistic collaboration through a workshop process led by artists from each country. The diverse range of approaches includes experiments into site specific public theatre (The Red Room) or the body politic in conflict (Teatermaskinen). Each of these laboratories will last for six days. The laboratories also serve to share the experiences of The Story of Work with the public and interest groups and to gather new information and receive direct feedback into the project from artistic participants and reference groups.

Laboratory 3. Festival: The future of work and the future of The Story of Work

In April 2007 the groups will convene in Copenhagen for eight days to sum up the working process and present to each other the results of the project. All participants will be invited; reference groups, scientists, trade unions from the research process as well as associated partners, media and the audience. There will be a theoretical symposium and a festival presenting to the public the national productions. The focus of the internal discussions will be on how to take forward an international touring production based on the creative collaboration that has emerged and the learning that has taken place throughout the process. Finally the results of the project will be evaluated.

After each laboratory a report will be compiled. A final publication, marking the end of the project will contain results of the evaluation, a comprehensive description of artistic experiences, topical data and achievements on audience development. The national projects and the work in process will be presented on a video-DVD.

PROJECT SCHEDULE

Winter 2006                 Pre-planning
06/01/2006-06/12/2006 Production and artistic leading group meetings
06/13/2006-06/18/2006 Laboratory 1 in Riddarhyttan
06/19/2006-12/04/2006 Dissemination. Leading group and artistic working group meetings.
12/05/2006-12/10/2006 Laboratory 2 in Helsinki
12/13/2006-04/14/2007 Dissemination. Leading group and artistic working group meetings.
04/15/2007-04/22/2007 Laboratory 3 in Copenhagen
04/23/2007-05/31/2007 Dissemination. Reports. Evaluation.

Work on the national productions and with the reference groups

continues throughout the two years.