This year’s Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) annual summer
school is entitled “Care of Earth, Care of People” and will focus on
issues that address the changes needed in different systems to
promote inclusion and sustainability in the broadest sense. The summer
school will take place in Smiltene from 4 to 11 August. Six lectures and
workshops will be open to everyone.
Accessibility, inclusion, and diversity are words we hear more and more in our daily lives, and cultural and arts institutions are striving to make their content and programs accessible to people with different needs. But often the meanings of these words are misunderstood or reduced to actions that are done not in a meaningful way, but in a way that allows us to tick the “we are accessible” box. The aim of this summer school is to explore the possibilities of collaboration between different sectors, cultural, social, economic, political, and also ecological. As art historian Ieva Astahovska, one of the curators of the program, explains, it also— seeks to “offer solutions on how different fields and systems can interact and change in order to promote an understanding of meaningful coexistence and well-being, bringing together diverse communities at both individual and institutional levels.” The program will be held in English and public events are free of charge. All events will take place at Smiltene Secondary School (Dakteru street 27).
Public program:
Saturday, 5 August
10:00-11:30 – Talk and workshop by Agita Lūse From Acknowledgement to Social Justice: Representations of Disability in Social Movements, Academia, and Museums
12:00-13:30 – Talk by Karin Vicente High Impressions, Low Impact: Reducing the Emissions of an Art Exhibition
Monday, 7 August
11:30-13:00 – Talk and workshop by Jānis Brizga Climate and Climate Change
Wednesday, 9 August
15:30-17:00 – Talk and discussion by Līva Kreislere Cultural Planning: Artist-Led Urban Transformation
Thursday, 10 August
10:00-11:30 – Talk by Baiba Witajewska-Baltvilka Do Populism and Climate Scepticism Go Hand in Hand? Challenges for a Green Deal in Europe
16:30-18:30 – Presentation of creative projects
The public program of the summer school is open to anyone interested in the impact of climate change on everyday life, environmentally friendly lifestyles and conservation of natural resources, social and environmental justice and responsibility, and/or methods for maintaining mental health and well-being.
A full description of the publicly available events can be found on the LCCA website.
The curators of the summer school programme are Ieva Astahovska and Elza Medne.
The LCCA summer school is organized in collaboration with Smiltene Municipality, the Art Academy of Latvia, and ISSP, a platform for contemporary photography, art, and education. The summer school is part of the project “Islands of Kinship: A Collective Manual for Sustainable and Inclusive Art Institutions,” supported by the Creative Europe Programme.
