Performing Gender – Right to Dance! Creative Europe Project Design

BAM! Cultural strategies and Cassero LGBT Center collaborated from 2013 to 2015 on the management and web communication of Performing Gender, the European project on contemporary dance and gender identity created and directed by Gender Bender Festival. For the continuation of activities on the three-year period 2016-2019, the project partners decided to raise the stakes, turning to the strand of European funding reserved for large-scale cooperation. To coordinate the application process, they asked for BAM!’s support.

In the first two years of its existence, Performing Gender aroused huge interest from the world of European contemporary dance and was appreciated as one of the only projects in circulation to reflect directly on pressing issues such as gender identity and sexual orientation through performing arts. At the end of its journey, many institutions have asked to join the design table: among them top names such as the Cullberg Ballet in Stockholm or the Zodiak Center in Helsinki, research festivals such as City of Women in Ljubjana, large venues like Le Phénix of Valenciennes and important centers for audience development such as Yorkshire Dance in Leeds.

The expansion of the partnership and the need to aspire to greater funding necessitated a definite coordination of the process. At the same time, the transition to the new Creative Europe program posed new challenges in terms of activities, expected results and attention to new European priorities: audience development.

BAM! as of March 2015 coordinated the drawing board, when a core group of partners were found in Bologna for the final symposium of the first European project. It drew up a first draft of a new project and gradually introduces the partners’ feedback; it managed the relationship with potential new partners who, from time to time were contacted; it coordinated the meetings in Bologna, Amsterdam and Bassano del Grappa between March and August 2015.

Finally, in September 2015, it gave shape to the final project and to the direct application to the European Union, sent in October 2015 to the Creative Europe program, taking care of the project and all its details: activity planning, budgeting, preparation, the graphic processing of the final dossier and e-form filing. The final project involves the participation of 10 partners from 8 European countries, and will take place over three years from June 2016 to May 2019. The release of the list of funded projects is expected by the end of March 2016.

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