Polart Circle Erasmus Project

Project Title

Polart Circle

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

In 2015, when the artistic partners of Polart Circle conceived the project, the question of “creativity” and the need to stimulate it in Europe was already well entrenched. We remember the European year of creativity in 2009. These partners had chosen to mobilize it in cooperation projects in their natural field: the creation of shows and European artistic workshops, with the help of the Program Culture in particular.
The social movements that marked the 2010s (Arab Spring, Indignados, Occupy, ZAD, to name a few), have sparked many debates in European societies. Some have materialized in the form of collectives deliberating and leading to citizen proposals for society. The partners then saw a form of parallel between these civic approaches and those implemented in their artistic teams. They have in common to question social issues, to deliberate on how to do it, and to come up with an (artistic) proposal shared with citizens (the public).
Polart Circle was designed in this context. It was no longer a question for the partners of creating their work, but rather of questioning their own creative process, of formalizing them in order to share it and contribute.
Polart Circle has thus set itself the objective of contributing to developing creativity and the European debate on political issues (POL) by introducing artistic methodological resources (ART), and offering this approach within the framework of a cooperation bringing very different European points of view (Circle).
For three years, the partners worked together to produce methodological resources in the form of a collection of videos presenting their work and offering tools to Europeans wishing to also carry out this type of approach. They teamed up from the conception of the project with two universities and an NGO to allow the overall approach to be connected to society and its expectations.
Thus, 9 partners joined for the experience:
on the one hand 6 artistic companies from Sweden, Greece, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal and France,
on the other hand two universities from Croatia and Lithuania,
and finally an Italian NGO, member of a large European network.
The activities have been implemented for 3 years. Each season saw the production of 6 methodologies in the form of a series of videos available online. These methodologies were tested and documented before they went online. A dedicated website representing the entire project has been published. Today it is the entry point for resource users.
Multiplier events were organized in all the countries of the partnership in order to promote the productions of the project and to publicize the overall cooperation approach.
The result of the experience is a set of online tools accessible online allowing any European citizen who is a member of a collective (association, artistic group, student group, citizen collective, etc.) to implement their own creative process by following an existing methodology. The variety of approaches offered in Polart Circle allows each team to find an approach that suits them, or even combine several approaches to create their own.
One of the difficulties of our project was to measure the impact that the publication of these methodological tools could have. However, we have been able to observe, within our partnership, that these methodologies have circulated and helped to initiate many projects.
Polart Circle’s broad partnership has reached many citizens in everyone’s networks and communities. The project was presented at numerous public moments bringing together educational leaders (Epale, Unesco, etc.) and active citizens. Partners will continue to use these methodologies and share them in future projects. Several of them have already joined forces to continue the experience of strategic partnerships and create new tools to help broaden the range of creative tools available to European citizens.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 280047,99 Eur

Project Coordinator

La Transplanisphere & Country: FR

Project Partners

• TEATERMASKINEN EK
• THEATRIKI ASTIKI ETAIREIA ODC
• ASSOCIAZIONE CITTADINANZATTIVA ONLUS
• Pucko otvoreno uciliste Zagreb
• LIETUVOS MUZIKOS IR TEATRO AKADEMIJA
• Ex-Quorum – Associação de Divulgação de Eventos Culturais
• ORTZAI SC