RESEO is delighted to announce the launch of the Mind the Gap project, in which arts workers from around Europe will explore online participatory work with disadvantaged communities.
Over the past few years, arts education professionals have been experimenting new ways to design their projects for and with participants and with increasingly diverse audiences in mind. The 2015 RESEO publication European Overview of the Use of Digital Media for Opera, Music and Dance Education found that cultural institutions were becoming increasingly aware of the need to work with new technologies in order to increase participation and diversity in arts education activities.
However, using digital tools for outreach and education activities is easier said than done for learning departments and freelance educators with limited resources. Many of their beneficiaries, including senior citizens and members of lower-income communities, are affected by the “digital divide”, or inequality of access to digital tools and resources, further limiting access to participation.
Several years later, these issues are more pressing than ever. Cultural institutions have been severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, while vulnerable communities are disproportionately affected from an economic, health and psychosocial point of view. However, the crisis came with a silver lining: the exemplary creativity and resourcefulness demonstrated by arts educators and their communities.
Mind the Gap will explore methodologies for working digitally with disadvantaged communities, offering training, case studies, online tools and a study of how arts workers, educators and teaching artists can support communities affected by the digital gap.
For more information, visit mindthegap-project.org
Partners
- RESEO (Belgium)
- Garsington Opera (UK)
- Les Clés de l’écoute (France)
- Irish National Opera (Ireland)
- Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (Norway)
- Materahub (Italy)
Duration
Two years (March 2021 – February 2023)
Mind the Gap is co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission