Portfolio
CHA collaborates with the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF) on the Digital Culture Fellowship Programme, which – starting in 2023 – will host a total of 9 fellows over the course of three years. The fellowship programme unfolds at the intersection of society and technology within the disciplines of science, visual arts, film, gaming, design or other forms of visual culture. With the fellowship, individual or collective makers are given the opportunity to break new ground and set up multidisciplinary collaborations with makers and organizations from visual culture. Research outcomes are shared in an annual report, in a session during the NFF Film Festival and in a final publication at the end of the fellowship programme. CHA contributes with expertise and feedback in relation to selection processes, research trajectories and dissemination. More information here
SPRING Performing Arts Festival is an international festival, located in Utrecht, that presents new developments on the crossovers between dance, theatre, and performance and on art in public space. SPRING Academy is the festival’s platform for artistic exchange and connects emerging artists, dramaturgs, scenographers and researchers to the artists of SPRING via workshops, masterclasses and lectures. Students from different BA, MA and RMA programmes attend the Academy as part of their curriculum. UU research group Transmission in Motion has a long lasting partnership with SPRING Academy. They have co-organized a wide range of events, including the Performing Robots Conference (2019), as well as Masterclasses with renowned scholars, such as Peter Eckersall.
In August 2023, CHA co-organized the summer school Supervising Artistic and Practice-Based Research, a collaboration between the Academy of Art in Copenhagen, the University in Aarhus and BAK, basis voor actuele kunst. For 5 days, 32 supervisors of dissertations between art and science met in Utrecht to talk about the challenges and dilemmas they encounter in their work. How do PhD students in the arts give form in words and images to the social and environmental challenges to which they want to contribute with their research? What is the relationship between the written word and the created image? How can the policy relationship be designed to do justice to the professionalism of the artist? How does the learning process of the artistic doctoral student best take shape? In August 2024, the second edition of this summer school took place in Denmark.
Residencies in Utrecht organizes and facilitates social, interactive and educational encounters between international artists and the city of Utrecht. These encounters take shape in long-term residencies in which the artist commits to Utrecht for a longer period of time and collaborates in carefully planned projects with various organisations from the city. Makers/thinkers are invited by organisations that are part of the continuously growing network of Residences in Utrecht. These are cultural organisations, educational institutions and organisations in the social domain. CHA is part of the editorial team of Residenties Utrecht and is committed to creating meaningful connections and collaborations between Residenties artists and students and staff of Utrecht University. CHA has now collaborated with several Residenties artists, such as Amparo Gonzales and Nahuel Cano.
What You See Festival is an arts festival about gender and identity. Here you will see work by artists who are not or rarely seen in the Netherlands, uniquely curated programmes, unexpected pop-up performances, free exhibitions and more. Together with artists and audiences, What You See Festival creates a shared quest for a more inclusive society. Since 2021, the MA Contemporary Theatre, Dance and Dramaturgy and WYSF have collaborated in a special educational project. Students of the Dramaturgical Practices course immerse themselves in the festival and, based on their observations, pitch an idea for a performance or event to the festival programmer for the next edition of the festival. Students practice programming skills, while the festival gets valuable input from young adults who are also the target audience of their festival.
CHA member Toine Minnaert works closely with LKCA on the evaluation of arts education in primary schools - and more specifically on the funding programme Cultuureducatie met Kwaliteit III (2021-2024). As part of this collaboration, in which CHA acts as one of the local knowledge partners, he wrote evaluation reports for the secretaries (penvoerders) of arts education in primary schools in the provinces of Utrecht and Flevoland in 2023. The commissioned projects consisted of a qualitative and quantitative analysis of a series of questionnaires filled in by primary schools. He was also co-author of the programme evaluation of the Cultural Participation Fund (FCP). The evaluations consisted of qualitative and quantitative analysis of questionnaires filled in by schools and several sessions with the clients on draft versions of the report.
Movie and series makers of colour are less likely to be employed than white makers, have shorter tenures and are less likely to work in leadership positions. They experience the film and AV sector as not very inclusive. Those who do experience the sector as inclusive are above average age, often male, and in leadership positions. This is shown in research on ethnic diversity in front of and behind the scenes of films and series. The research was conducted by Associate Professor of Media Studies Vincent Crone together with ten students. The study is a so-called baseline measurement: this is the first survey of the Dutch film and av sector in this field. This study on diversity and inclusiveness in the film- and AV industry was commissioned by the Ministry of OCW in the spring 2023. More information here
Big explosions, imitation rain storms and a crew flying to film locations all over the world: filmmaking cannot exactly be called sustainable. How do we change this? Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies Judith Keilbach and her team conducted a year and a half of research and recently presented their report ‘Towards a Sustainable Film Industry’ to the Netherlands Film Fund. Find more information here.
On September 1, 2023, Tessa van Asselt started as a researcher on the project Learning from LinC. LinC stands for Leadership in Culture, or a series of learning courses for cultural professionals offered from Utrecht University. These learning courses take shape regionally or thematically. Think of LinC ZeeBra, a regional version for culture professionals in Zeeland and North Brabant. Think also of LinC Artistic, the thematic version for artists, art curators, creative directors and artistic directors to which CHA contributes. Tessa will research the educational design principles that underlie LinC's success: what makes LinC deliver something for participants and thus "work"? These principles can then be shared with education for another professional audience.