LabforCulture.org
The Latest News
The LabforCulture team has been very active since going live in June. We have been working intensively with our Editorial Group, content and technical partners to improve and add to the content and the technical features of the site. All of the planned language versions of the site are now live, with LabforCulture.org now accessible in English, French, German, Polish and Spanish. User involvement and feedback has been growing steadily, with an average of 5000 unique visitors and 61,000 page visits per month. We are also actively promoting the site at a wide range of offline events across Europe and are eager to meet our users and get your feedback.
New Director of LabforCulture
We are pleased to introduce the new Director of LabforCulture, Katherine Watson, who has taken over from Bettina Knaup as of October 1, 2006. Katherine is moving from Ottawa, Canada to join the LabforCulture team. She describes herself as a connector: connecting ideas and people, bringing dreams and schemes into reality. More often than not this means working across the boundaries between sectors and disciplines, forging unexpected partnerships and rising to the challenge to look at the world differently. Katherine's experience combines interdisciplinary production with advocacy, research, policy and program development for non-profit arts organizations and government. She is deeply interested in the innovative use of technology to facilitate public engagement and in working with emerging artists and those on the fringe of the mainstream. Recent work includes producing www.terminus1525.ca, consulting for www.culturemondo.org and leading a forum for www.habitatjam.com.The team and all of LabforCulture's partners very much look forward to working with her in this next phase of the project.
LabforCulture at the European Parliament
On September 11, 2006, Gottfried Wagner, Director of the European Cultural Foundation, and Angela Plohman, Content Coordinator of LabforCulture, presented LabforCulture.org to the European Parliament's Committee on Culture and Education. LabforCulture is a creative response to the needs expressed in the Ruffolo Report commissioned by the European Parliament in 2001.
The presentation of LabforCulture was well received by an audience of about 50 persons, with MEPs reacting very positively to evidence of strong user interest and online cooperation, and to the encouraging web statistics for the first months LabforCulture.org has been online. MEP Doris Pack strongly recommended to the Parliament members that it is their task to secure the sustainability of LabforCulture, since the idea originated there. She called for all MEPs to go back to their governments and recommend support for LabforCulture to ensure sustainability after the pilot phase ending in 2008.
Spanish version of LabforCulture.org now online
http://www.labforculture.org/es
New Region in Focus: Spain & Portugal
The latest edition of Region in Focus, published in October 2006, presents an overview of the cultural situation in Spain and Portugal. Two local experts, Javier Brun (Spain) and Filipa Colaço (Portugal), conducted a mapping of independent cultural organisations their respective countries. Region in Focus aims to provide a personal viewpoint of a researcher or expert, and present information on cultural policy and production in lesser-known or underexposed countries, culturally diverse regions, or particular cities where various cultures live together. This section provides better visibility for independent cultural and artistic organisations that have the potential for European cross-border cooperation.a Cultural Component as an integral part of the EU's Foreign Policy?
As part of the research programme of LabforCulture, one study revealing facts and comments on Europe's foreign cultural polices from the national governments is now available to order. a Cultural Component as an integral part of the EU's Foreign Policy, by Diane Dodd, Melle Lyklema and Kathinka Dittrich-Van Weringh, has been described as essential reading to grasp the complexities of national cultural foreign policy across Europe, with great detail paid to institutional activities in each country. The book will be available to download from LabforCulture.org in November 2007.
Cultural Cooperation Resources
In the context of the Gateway to Cultural Cooperation Project (G2CC), supported by the European Commission DG Education and Culture, the European Institute for Comparative Cultural Research (ERICarts) was asked to identify key research resources on European cultural cooperation and analyse their major findings, including trends and recommendations.
At the beginning of 2006, ERICarts began a survey to collect research resources from all corners of Europe. One of the main goals of this exercise was to ensure that research conducted in all parts of Europe and in all languages, was represented in the final collection including the main findings and/or recommendations. An online questionnaire was developed to assist this work.
Over the past months, ERICarts has worked together with experts from around Europe to compile a list of 99 resources that have been classified in a database and are currently available on the labforculture.org.
MyLabforCulture
Join the community!
http://www.labforculture.org/en/user/register
Our site is your site
On the new website people are enjoying creating their own profiles. They're blogging! Go check it out.www.labforculture.org/community
Where we've been
On October 18 and 19, 2006, LabforCulture took part in the conference "Cultural Observatories: institutional objectives, organisational structure, political relevance" in Bologna, Italy, organised by the Regione Emilia-Romagna, ENCATC, the University of Bologna and the Fondazione ATER.
LabforCulture participated in the Culture.mondo Roundtable in Dubrovnik, Croatia from October 20-22, 2006.
From October 25-27, 2006 LabforCulture had a display space in the Interactive Forum at the 9th ELIA Biennial Conference in Ghent, Belgium.
LabforCulture at Mobile.Home
LabforCulture will participate in Mobile.Home - IETM Plenary Meeting in Helsinki, Finland from November 9-12, 2006. LabforCulture will hold an Info Cell on Saturday, November 11 from 10:00-12:00 and we will participate in a Working Group titled "Digital Tools for Cultural Mobility: Enhancing the User's Experience". This Working Group is conceived and animated by Diane Dodd, On-the-Move, in the framework of the G2CC project supported by the European Commission.
www.ietm.orgNew content daily
We are regularly adding new content to LabforCulture.org. Every day, new items are featured in the dynamic right hand column of our home page. If you are logged in, all new items related to the fields of interest that you have indicated in your profile are highlighted in MyNews.
MyLabforCulture
MyLabforCulture is a personalised, interactive space designed to help you make the most of your experience of LabforCulture.org. Once you have registered, you have many options to enhance your visit and make the site useful for you. Create a profile to connect to others and share what you are working on. Create your own community group, or join an existing one. Bookmark your favourite items. Add new content. Participate in discussion forums. Create a blog. Don't forget to check the box "Display my profile" if you would like your profile to appear in the Community pages of the site.
New discussion forum
Cross border (trans-national) interaction among artists and cultural operators transcends physical and political boundaries. Today, this process is intensified even more due to the impact of Internet and development of online communication tools. Virtual spaces enable us to overcome physical barriers to cooperate and enhance the visibility of cultural communities and initiatives-even those who are isolated and in the peripheries. Our cultural practice, artistic exchange and mobility, our means and tools for cooperation across Europe also change as a result of this process. What do you think? Share your opinions online in a new discussion forum moderated by Violeta Vojvodic.
LabforCulture News Blog
To stay informed of all of the latest news from LabforCulture, check out the LabforCulture News Blog, which will change weekly with updates on our activities, where we are and what we are planning. Our blog is interactive so feel free to post your comments!
Featured blog
Since LabforCulture.org went live, many people have registered on the site and several have actively started blogging. One blogger on the site, Valery Klamm, a photographer from Novosibirsk, Russia, has created a visually engaging blog titled THIS LAND SMILES TO ME. Valery regularly posts what he terms FOTOTEXTs on LabforCulture.org and we invite you to take a look!
Feedback
We are eager to hear your views on the website in order to continue to make the site as relevant and useful as possible for all of our users. What features would you like to see on the site? What parts of LabforCulture.org do you find most useful? We now have an online questionnaire that you can fill out here. We look forward to hearing from you!
Link to us
If you would like to make a link to LabforCulture.org on your own website, we have created banners for you, which you can easily place on your site. Choose your favourite banner and download it directly onto your computer. Don't forget to link the banner with the url http://www.labforculture.org
The European Cultural Foundation would like to thank the following organisations for their support:
The European Union - Directorate General Education and Culture; Federal Cultural Foundation Germany (with partner: Deutsches InformationsZentrum Kulturförderung, DIZK); Robert Bosch Foundation; Compagnia di San Paolo; Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Sciences; The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation; Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage; Norwegian Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs; Cypriot Ministry of Education and Culture; Fritt Ord Foundation; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation; Luxembourg Ministry of Culture; and the Spanish Cultural Ministry.
The European Cultural Foundation is funded by:De Bank Giro Loterij, De Lotto and Prince Bernhard Cultural Foundation.
Note: sole responsibility for the contents of this online text lie with the individual authors and the European Cultural Foundation. Views expressed by individual authors do not necessarily reflect the views of the ECF.
contact: info@labforculture.org
LabforCulture.org is a partner initiative of the European Cultural Foundation
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