International
Collaborations, research and exchange visits with international partners are a key aspect of the work of CityArts. These include specific strategic partnerships with those cities that are culturally twinned with Dublin (Liverpool, Barçelona and San Jose) and with a range of North/South, EU and international models of practice.
In 2006 theatre director and cultural activist Peter Sellars spent Bloomsday with CityArts staff and some of our Irish and Nigerian theatre associates to explore possibilities for future collaborations involving Dublin's new communities. CityArts invited artists Jay Koh and Chuan Yuan (Malaysia) and Loraine Leeson (London) to vist Dublin and share their work with practitioners here. All have featured in our In Conversation roundtable series along with Sao Paulo artist Fernando Marquespenteado and American academic Grant Kester. Towards the end of 2006, Atlanta based artist and curator Eddie Chambers participated in Memory-Art-Power, a symposium which looked at memory building for cultural validation and development, with particular reference to marginalised communities.
Theatre director Peter Sellars meets with Bisi Adigun of Arambe Theatre Company as part of an event hosted by CityArts in Dublin, 2006
In 2007 a practice exchange took place between women in the CityArts Tower Songs project (Fatima Mansions) and members of Tenant Spin in Liverpool.
2008 saw artist Sonia Boyce participating in Art of the Ordinary, an on-going research project which looked at the connections (if any) between recent contemporary art practice, folk art practice and folk memory. Sonia participated in the roundtable forum Creating Memory and her work Crop Over was screened at Dublin City Library.
