Activities

The activities included in the NIPA project are listed below. If you wish to stay informed about these activities, you can subscribe to our public newsletter (if you are a member, you are already subscribed to the members newsletter).

Events

• Three Plenary Meetings in Belgrade, Serbia (2022), Aarhus, Denmark (2023) and Sofia, Bulgaria (2024), bringing the performing arts sector together for a large event, once per year.
   
• Three IETM Focus Meetings in Brussels, Belgium (2022), in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg (2023) and Den Bosch, The Netherlands (2024). Focus Meetings are a new IETM meeting format that will allow for a free-flowing yet dynamic and effective brainstorming session with members on one of the three NIPA themes. The main goals of a Focus meeting are to look into local realities and shaping strategies to make one’s professional context more fair, sustainable and inclusive.
   
• Three Innovate Culture Policy events (held in January 2023, 2024 and 2025) focusing on the main research topic IETM has commissioned in the previous year.

Training

• Two editions of the Local Journeys for Change (LJC) programme on Inclusion & Fairness (2022) and Green Transition in the Performing Arts (2023) (later changed to the IETM Green School) for a group of  up to 35 members each. Our LJCs aim to support IETM members to realise new projects or new processes  back home and empower them to bring positive change to their local professional context, communities or policy-making field through training, mentorship, peer-review exercise, and financial support. 
   
• Two editions of the IETM Campus in Berlin, Germany (2022) and Polverigi, Italy in 2023. IETM Campus is a five day summer school training for 25-30 young professionals to work across borders and learn about how to internationalise their practice through training with four experienced mentors. 

Membership programme

• Three editions of the IETM Global Connect Programme, in collaboration with and with the support of some of IETM’s Associate Members. IETM Global Connect provides opportunities and grants for up to 20 performing arts professionals from across the globe each year to enable them to become part of the network, share their own experience with its members and be inspired for the benefit of their local community.  

Publications

• A three-episode publication series on Inclusion & Fairness entitled Which Side are You On? (2022), Environmental Sustainability entitled Climate Justice - Through the Creative Lens of the Performing Arts (2023) and the New International (2024). The aims of the series are to identify the burning challenges in the sector, collect success stories and best practices, generate data, and inspire change in policy-making.  

• Three Mappings of the national performing arts scene in Serbia entitled The Performing Arts Scene in Serbia (2022), Denmark entitled Danish Performing Arts - A Point of View and Understanding the Greenlandic Performing Arts (2023) and Bulgaria (2024), commissioned in the framework of the NIPA Plenary Meetings, which help participants to navigate through the multiplicity and diversity of the local performing arts reality.

   

Advocacy

We will continue to follow and initiate  policy work and new ideas on an international, EU and national level sending out arguments and viable policy messages in line with the values of our network. Beyond reacting to the political and policy discourse, we will strive to shape the political reality ourselves by fostering and shaping decision-making agendas and making sure the values of sustainability, fairness and inclusivity are central to them.

Among various advocacy tools, we will produce policy papers and organise Innovate Cultural Policy events for policy-makers, cultural institutes and art councils.

We will also consolidate the advocacy for the performing arts, getting ever closer with our peer networks in the sector - Circostrada, European Dancehouse Network, European Festivals Association, among others. We will maintain an informal policy platform with them to discuss transversal policy issues, exchanging and generating knowledge, and undertaking joint advocacy actions towards the European institutions and member states.

In 2024 a special emphasis will be on Fair Pay in connection to the ongoing work on Working Conditions and Status of the Artist, initiated by European Institutions.