Art Moves Africa – Retracing Roots and Tracing New Routes: Mobility and Touring in North Africa

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Conclusion & Recommendations
—
QUOTE:
« We can create more virtual
platforms. We know it’s hard to
travel, but it shouldn’t be a
constraint on creating and doing
things together. Boda Boda project
showed us that it was possible to
work, reflect and feel together
all the while staying at home. It
starts with a commitment. »
Nouha Ben Yebdri
Curator, Mahal Art Space,
Tangiers*
—
3.
Improve funding
opportunities
Lack of funding for mobility
is the regrettable counterpart
to the exorbitant costs of travel. The following
ideas were proposed for funders including AMA:
3.1. Create partnerships with festivals and specific
events, for example through a quota
system (this is the system employed by
Africa Art Lines, among others)
3.2. Give festival organizers the opportunity to
select the artists they want to invite
2.6. Ensure presence of mobility funders at events,
organize presentations
2.7. Host online meetings and e-conferences to
share information about opportunities, funding
sources, etc. These could be delivered through
regional or city-based point-people
2.8. Provide more support for “go-and-see” initiatives
and meetings that are not necessarily tied
to specific projects or expected outcomes.
Many artists expressed feeling that the strong
pressure to produce was in tension with the
total lack of knowledge they had of scenes
outside their own. As such, they felt that the
push to collaborate may be premature; they
need to get to know each other before they
start creating together
3.3. Create discipline-specific funding lines
to support disciplines that are weaker in
different countries and/or that suffer from
neglect from authorities and funding bodies
(e.g., dance in Algeria)
3.4. Expand the support that is included with
mobility funds: cover accommodation, per
diems, etc. (Al-Mawred al-Thaqafy has this
policy)
3.5. Advocate for the necessity of long-term
program support as opposed to projectby-project
funding, including mobility funds
3.6. Provide more flexible deadlines
3.7 Consider integrating interviews into selection
procedures to reduce the dependency
on professional grant-writing skills and
restore human exchange in the grant application
process