The summaries and conclusions of “Open Forum Feria Huesca 2011” have been published. The debates, under the name “Reinvent Yourself to Challenge the Crises” of the Spanish performing arts sector, took place during three months in a “Facebook Group” finishing in an on-site session, the 30^th of September of this year in Huesca during “Feria Internacional de Teatro y Danza”.

The outcomes of all this process are in the following document (unfortunately only published in Spanish). It is a broad guide to get inspiration and discover good helpful practices to overcome the difficult moment that the performing arts sector is going through at this moment in Spain and in some other countries in Europe.

For me has been a great experience designing the process and creating this platform for free exchange of ideas and experiences and thus collaborate in the reinvention of the performing arts sector.

Everything started in this blog when at the beginning of the year I started to publish a collection of articles about “Solutions to the Crises from the Performing Arts”. The expectations created drove me to go further trying to involve as many as professionals of performing arts in the process.  And so, the Forum was thought as a communication space to share new ways of thinking and practices to permit artists, companies, producers and distributors of contemporary performing arts to cope with the future challenges of the deep crisis that is being experienced in Spain.  The Forum was open to any type of initiative that could help to reconsider the work models and find new ways of adapting to the current situation.

All ideas and experiences were included at the Forum.  It did not matter if they referred to creation, production, fundraising, administration, promotion or communication processes; each and every one of the aspects of work of artists and companies structures were taken into consideration. The topics developed can be encompassed into:

–  Increase the variety of creative products

– Changes in the structures of companies and organisations

–  Other funding systems for performing arts projects

– Internationalisation and mobility of artists, companies and performing arts products

– New ways to communicate with audiences and communities

– Take advantage of publicly owned spaces and other resources that are not in use because funding cuttings

The Facebook Group got to have 604 members with an important follow-up discussion and debate. From the 30th of June, when opened the Forum until September the 30th, there were 780 postings and 21 documents were generated.

The Forum members profile was professionals of performing arts and culture from Spain. The Forum was attended by all sectors involved in the processes of creation, production, distribution and exhibition. It is important to note that this communication among all sectors of the performing arts, especially between artists and managers is unusual in Spain, thing that could be considered the major success of the Forum.

The on-site Forum in Huesca was attended by around 50 people. Four working groups deployed their activity for different areas of Huesca’s Palace of Congress and two plenary sessions took place at the beginning and at the end of the session.