The Latvian Academy of Culture is organizing a Study week to create ideas for the Āgenskalns Market
"Participatory art in public spaces" is a project that focuses on creating concepts for participatory initiatives or activities in public spaces to attract potential audiences to the Āgenskalns Market. From October 3rd to October 7th the students are working in groups to think of ideas that could help attract different audiences to the Āgenskalns Market.
The urban development project is a cooperation between the Latvian Academy of Culture (LAC), Campus of Caen of Sciences Po Rennes, Graduate School of Arts & Media of Caen-Cherbourg (ESAM), Latvian Academy of Arts (LMA), Riga Technical University (RTU) and Tallinn Music and Theatre Academy (Estonia).
The ideas generated during the Study Week will be presented to the Riga City Council representatives, the Āgenskalns neighbourhood community, participating Universities/Academies and invited institutions.
The first day of the Study Week was spent with different cultural institutions. Our aim was to understand how culture interacts with the local community, what art forms are well perceived and which ones have more potential to develop. The day was fun - the Circus School helped us understand how they invite locals to participate in their activities. We got to swing on the hanging swings, play basketball and laugh. We met the theatre company Kvadrifrons and spent time sharing ideas on how to invite teenagers to create meaningful art in order to voice their experiences.
The second day was the first day of working in groups and creating ideas for our target audiences - groups of people that have not yet been involved in cultural processes happening at the Āgenskalns market. We spoke and took good advice from Mārtiņš Eņģelis and Jānis Balodis and toured Dirty Deal Teatro. It is a theatre focused on alternative performances.
The third day was spent on continuing and developing our ideas for the target audiences. We presented our work to Aigars Bikše. He gave us good advice that helped the ideas become more evident. We spent the afternoon learning from Gundega Laiviņa from New York City. Her input helped us with specific tools for making our ideas become reality and gave us inspiration in alternative art forms that could be replicated or developed to fit our specific target audiences.
We are very happy to be here and excited to create valuable ideas that could help the Āgenskalns community become more diverse and more inclusive.