City of Women: from occasional to continuous arts and cultural education

Thanks to the amazing performer and curator Teja Reba, I am part of City of Women Festival 2018. The 24th edition of the International Festival of Contemporary Art, based in Ljubljana, is happening between October 4th and 8th 2018 (core program) or actually, for the whole month.

I will be in the role of a mentor/educator (in training). Since 2016, Ana Čigon, Urška Jež, Teja Reba and I have been shaping 45-minute-long school lessons about different aspects of feminism. So far, due to the unpaid nature of this work, we were able to produce only one module/lesson per year. It is shaped as a set of instructions for the professor who want to discuss feminism in his_her class. We have been sending our offer to high schools in Slovenia in the days before March 8, The International Women’s Day, in the hope that it will help the professors to address both the historical and contemporary significance of this “holiday”. Here, you can find the of lessons we have prepared so far (in Slovene only).

At part of this year’s City of Women arts and cultural education program, Ana Čigon and I are guiding high school students to Marwa Arsanios' exhibition Who is Afraid of Ideology? It’s a wonderful title and an exciting, both politically and artistically challenging exhibition of her documentary/art video works. I am very much looking forward to see parts I and II of her video Who is afraid of ideology. Part I was shot in the mountains of Kurdistan in the early 2017; it focuses on the Autonomous Women's Movement in Rojava. Part II was made very recently and deals with different ecofeminist groups in Rojava, especially the way they attempt to take care of the land and themselves.

Video still / "Have You Ever Killed a Bear or Becoming Jamila"

You can read more about the content and methodology of our guides to the exhibition here. The guides are part of a larger focus on Marwa Arsanios' work at City of Women 2018. Check the full program here.


Last but certainly not the least, I must add the great news that as of October 2018, City of Women is part of a project called S(v)odobnost, focused on the professionalization of arts and cultural education in Slovenia. Together with SCCA-Ljubljana, ŠKUC, KUD Mreža and Nomad Dance Academy, we are going to be able to dedicate a lot more (paid!) time to the research, networking, organising and learning necessary to set up a continuous, rather than sporadic program of arts and culture education. Thanks to the financial support of the Ministry of Public Administration, each organisation is going to be able to employ one person for this purpose for the period of fifteen months. I am happy to say that I am one of those people.