The activities in 2019 have consisted of: Residencies, both self-organized, in the context of Island Connect and in the context of The Contact Zones project – most have finished with open work-in-progress showings –  TOCIF, contact Improvisation fetstival, the Contact Zones festival with the exhibition 100% Fremmed?, presentation of performances at Bornholm Culture Week, workshops in Artistic Entrepreneurship and Continium Retreat and participation in The People’s Democratic Festival/Folkemødet.

BIRCA in 2019 rose to a new level with more visitors so that the vision of helping performing artists to show their potential succeeded. We found a design with full focus on research-based residencies where the artists experienced that they were supported by the peaceful environment and could concentrate and go deep into the artistic processes in order to find a new creative energy. We found our way to make feed-back processes which made sense for artists developing their material. At the same time, we fulfilled the ambition of creating a more local engagement partly through cooperating with local performing artists and partly through work-in-progress showings and performances for people on Bornholm.

All in all, 79 people (of these 46 women) from 20 countries – as well as 40 participants from 17 countries in TOCIF.  We have hosted 10 public arrangements for about 150 local and tourist and at the Contact Zones Festival about 3-400 participated. A lot of people saw 100% Fremmed? in Gudhjem.

You can read the full report here