Parliament of Practices, first meeting

Parliament of Practices, the first meeting
Feb 3, 2020, 10:00 – 18:30 

The Parliament of Practices is a project of Cross Pollination, initiated by Adriana La Selva and Marije Nie and supported by the NTL. The Parliament is an international network of theatre makers, performers and academic researchers connecting artistic practice and research. 

Cross Pollination (CP) is a research based performance platform that works with the transmission, transformation and generation of knowledge in-between performers and researchers with different backgrounds, while sharing and exchanging techniques. CP bases its framework on the principles of dialogue and collaboration between practices of art, community building and academic research. CP includes artists, professors, writers, researchers from different parts of Europe and the world. For more information on CP see our website www.crosspollination.space or read the document attached.

The Parliament will create meetings in different places that enable the exchange of practices, research and dialogue in-between them, involving both artistic and academic. In doing so, the Parliament maps and connects individual works with others, creating an ‘ecology’ of practices, performances and research.

Practice is the anchor of the Parliament, that grounds it in direct and embodied knowledge, and to a particular genealogy of theatre laboratory, research and third theater. From this anchor the Parliament can also connect and extrapolate to other levels of social organisation, civic life and society at large. 

This first meeting of the Parliament was attended by 25 people from the circles around NTL / Odin Teatret. The group had ten different nationalities, a wide range of ages and professional experiences, both from theatrical arts and academia (sometimes combining both). 

Short overview of the day:
The morning was focussed on ‘practice’ and the afternoon on the ‘Parliament’, with four main topics.
 
1.     Sharing one minute of practice. Overlaps between the practices showed a dialogue in-between practices

Reflection: what did you see?
2.     How can you speak from your practice, how can your practice speak through you?

Talk in small circles, the many results that came out of this will be sent later in the detailed minutes 
3.     Envisioning the Parliament

Everyone chose three images to speak from, then the visions were shared. Also introducing our names, home city and professional situation.  
4.     Harvest: What actions can the Parliament take and which principles and themes does it have, small personal promises for the future of the Parliament
Circle talk, gathering actions, themes and principles for the Parliament on A4 papers. 
Round of intentions: all agree to stay in the project, we created a list of actions people were interested in being part of and small promises for the future.