Thanks to its well-deserved reputation as an arts destination, Victoria has a big city’s amount of culture tucked into a small town’s space. But it’s always good for students to get a more big-picture perspective, which is where international field schools come in. In March, Theatre professor Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta took a group of students to the Netherlands to attend the 10th International Community Arts Festival (ICAF) in Rotterdam.
ICAF brought together artists from around the world who are using theatre as a tool for community building, education and social change; hundreds of participating students were then able to take part in workshops and panel talks, watch performances, build international connections and deepen their understanding of how community arts (or “applied theatre,” as we describe it) is created in different cultural contexts.
“For me, it was about getting a new cultural perspective on the arts,” says Anton Matsigura, one of 10 Theatre students who participated. “I was also excited to meet as many people as I possibly could to get perspective on theatre in their home countries.”
Fellow participant Savannah O’Heaney agrees. “I was attracted by both the idea of international travel and experiencing how different art can be in other places . . . I really wanted to see what else was out there,” she explains. “This year’s theme was ‘space for imagination’, so a lot of the workshops were about creating spaces for theatre and art to take place.”
Phoenix students at the event
Matsigura describes ICAF as being “kind of a no-boundaries festival . . . a lot of the work really pushed artistic and political boundaries. We were there for less than 10 days, and every single moment was just packed — there’s beauty and also challenges in that, but it was a great experience.” Describing it as “a bit of artistic whiplash,” Matsigura says that by day four, he was “consuming so much vastly different art that it was kind of hard to let it all sink in.”
As a self-funded field school, the students had to offset costs in a variety of ways, including mounting an online auction which raised about $3,500. (“We reached out to over a hundred companies for items that we could put up for bids, and that ended up covering our entire housing accommodation,” notes Matsigura.)
O’Heaney felt the experience offered her a radically different view on the practice of theatre. “Usually people get consumed with the idea of fame and celebrity, but this was more about how having an impact with your art was enough . . . it took away that toxic industry aspect of it and made it more about what the practice of art should be like.”
“This trip definitely inspired me to continue seeking a different perspective in everything that I see,” says Matsigura. “It may sound bizarre, but I really appreciated the Dutch directness towards their art: they didn’t always make it easy for us to understand . . . it was okay to spend time figuring it all out.”
Sadeghi-Yekta in the audience
Both students clearly appreciated the horizon-expanding opportunity of the field school. “It was inspiring to hear people’s artistic success stories, which I honestly don’t think we hear enough,” says Matsigura. “Almost everyone there was practicing art as a profession in some capacity, making their life work around it. It was just nice to hear how this can all be made into a career.”