Cultural centres as citizen initiatives

My name is Paul Bogen, I am from Cambridge in the UK. I worked for 30 years in the cultural industries, primarily managing and directing culture centres and theaters. For the last 3 years I’ve worked freelance as a project manager, consultant, trainer, researcher and fundraiser. I mainly work in Europe and all over the UK. Trans Europe Halles (TEH) is the European network of independent cultural centres, which currently has 50 members in about 24 countries. It is a network for people running their centres to exchange know-how, to exchange art and artists, to do joint projects together, to learn from each other and to work in collaboration on an international level. These cultural centres usually started as citizens‘ initiatives, so they are grassroots, not coming top-down from the state or a city, and therefore they tend to work with younger people, younger artists, younger audiences and more contemporary culture – so they work with new generations of artists, new generations of audiences and they are responding to needs and demands of young people in cities, which institutions don’t tend to do. The Junction was founded by a group of young people in Cambridge as a response to the fact that in the city the University has lots of cultural facilities but they are only for the students who go to Cambridge University. Prior to The Junction there where no cultural facilities for the many young people who live in the city but are not at the University. It was in response to these needs and demands for a place for them to socialize, meet their friends and experience contemporary youth culture as well as for young artists to develop their work and be supported by managers, producers and programmers. Today The Junction still plays the role of supporting young artists but it also has an educational role in its programme as well as presenting contemporary culture e.g. rock & pop music, theater, dance, new media, comedy, these kinds of art forms. Because The Junction started from the local community, its main mission was to serve the needs and demands of those people. The policy of The Junction was thus based on the audience, the users and not on the art. If they wanted theater, we would do theater. If they didn\'t want theater, we didn\'t do theater. It was really based on those youths, that youth community. They also were represented in the legal structure of the organisation as well.

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Cultural centres as citizen initiatives

Paul Bogen

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