Is an artistic residency only a space with four walls?  What should an artistic residency be?

What it should not be?  What do dance artists need to work?

Here, now, between us.

And of course, the essential follow-up question:  who is responsible for these needs?

The artists?  The spaces? Quartier am Hafen?  Where do we share a responsibility?  

Who is responsible for addressing the problem of precarity?  Who is responsible for adding sustainability to the artistic processes and the artists´ lives? What can we do to shift the shaky work-conditions within the dance field?

All these questions illustrate the purpose of this project. One question brings it to the point:  How could Quartier am Hafen support more artistic biographies and less artistic projects?  They both have different temporalities, and until now the shortest one was being favored. How could the Residency Program at Quartier promote the sustainability in the careers of local dance artists? 

Digital Toolbox for Dance Artists is a collective proposal to deal with these questions.  Artists and other experts collaborated with the team of Quartier am Hafen to build an online collection of resources to promote the structural sustainability of the artistic career for dance artists in Cologne.

The development of the toolbox initiates the reorientation of the residency program in the house. Away from “projectitis” and more focus on artistic biographies.

The Digital Toolbox for Dance Artists is similar to a digital database with questions and possible answers. It serves as inspiration and stimulation for the development of one’s own artistic biography.

It is for everyone in the dance scene to use and update.

11 resident artists and 40 experts in different fields engaged in one-to-one conversations about needs and interests. It was an exchange of experiences. Around 60 meetings took place between March and October 2021. The experts supported the artists in their search. They approached questions about sustainability in the artistic career, and to share strategies to take the next steps towards this.

This group of artists then met to select and formulate the material to be shared on the website. The conversations ranged from very practical day-to-day issues to philosophical questions about the artistic endeavor. Everything is link when it comes to the development of an artistic career. The aim was to point out relevant topics and material mentioned during the conversations. They collected references, links, checklists, workbooks, tips.

By creating this digital tool, we found ourselves working within a beautiful contradiction. This website could give rise to two misunderstandings. One that using it will solve your artistic life. That is not true. It is an impulse, not an lifeline. Each person is responsible for the well-being of his or her artistic life, but we can and should share our experiences and knowledge to achieve this.

And second, that the exchange through digital media is enough. It is not. The richest part of the process were the live conversations, both the individual and the group talks. The time dedicated to sharing and listening, and the contacts that were established under the excuse of creating this website are the real gain of this project.

We were surprised by the positive response when we were first reaching out. Try it yourself, you might be also surprised. We belong to those who firmly believe that sharing knowledge and resources is beneficial to all of us. No sharp elbows here. They are useless. This project started with a digital medium, an e-mail or a call, but ended up in a several face-to-face conversations and concrete actions to make.

So, we hope that this digital collection of resources exactly that,  the first step to connect with others and to help articulate needs and ideas. It gathers suggestions to keep insisting. Someone out there might help you with that what you are looking for. In an artistic residency, the physical space might be a limited resource, but the knowledge and ideas revolving around it surpass these limits. We just need to find the right tools to share them. This website is one of the ways to do this.

In Cologne, NRW and even at a national and international level, there are many individuals, groups, and institutions who take care of exchange platforms. It possible to connect to them. Just write them an e-mail, visit them, join them, support them. Just talk to them. Reach out.

You can start by finding their contacts on this website.