Antena at the IETM Plenary Meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria

During 12-15 June 2024, four representatives from Antena attended the IETM Plenary Meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria. We spent wonderful days at the main venue Toplocentrala and exploring other cultural venues in the city. This meeting offered a great opportunity for Antena to engage with an international network of cultural professionals, explore the local performing arts scene, and participate in enriching discussions on contemporary issues in the arts sector.

IETM - International network for contemporary performing arts is one of the oldest and largest international cultural networks, representing the voice of over 500 performing arts organizations and individual professionals working in the contemporary performing arts worldwide. 

Antena had never visited an IETM meeting before, so it was exciting to learn about a different network’s processes and broaden our network. Luckily one of us had already been at IETM meetings in the past (for different organizations), so we had some familiarity within the delegation. Actually, back then it was at the previous IETM meeting that happened in Sofia, back in 2014. So it was nice to see how the cultural field and the city have developed since.

This time, the IETM plenary meeting was at the - almost - brand new venue Toplocentrala. The Toplocentrala project is a joint initiative between a group of artists from the independent art scene and Sofia Municipality, which was launched in 2014 with the main idea to transform the former heat plant of the National Palace of Culture, built in 1981, into a Center for Contemporary Arts of modern European type.

For Antena the most relevant parts of the program were the networking sessions, workshops, and keynotes. Talking to members and representatives of IETM gave us quite an idea of what the benefits could be to join the network as Antena. The network mainly offers advocacy and professional development opportunities. Although one of the former board members told us that for him, the real effect of IETM only becomes clear after visiting 7 network meetings. 6 to go, then…

The topics on the content were very strong. Although the program was a bit stripped down (because of the topic of burnout they didn't want to make it too overwhelming), it was very inspiring how they approached the topic. Burnout is not the most ‘fun’ topic and unfortunately also not uncommon within culture. They found ways to make it motivating by connecting it to other topics like sustainability, the local cultural scene, and ‘burning in’ - to turn it to the positive side.

The most formal part of the program was, of course, the general assembly. At IETM it is also possible to attend it as a non-member, which we gladly did. What struck us was how fast and smooth it went. This was a great opportunity for us to get the overview of the IETM activities, financial situation, planned projects and members.

As IETM is a network for performing arts, there was a lot of performing arts to enjoy during the meeting. We visited several performances at several venues throughout the city. All of the performances had either a connection to the network and its members or to the venues that curated a program for the meeting. It was great to see the diversity and quality within the network and within the local performing arts scene: classical and contemporary dance, circus, comedy, and much more.

With all these inspiring talks, conversations, performances, and workshops we should for sure visit the next IETM meeting, and maybe even 6 more times.

Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council.