RESCUE – regeneration of disused industrial sites through creativity in Europe
RESCUE is a smaller scale cooperation project co-funded by the EACEA Creative Europe programme. Partners from Italy, Germany, Slovenia and Austria invite artists and students from secondary schools to explore the history of abandoned industrial sites in the participant countries, with a view to re-defining them as sustainable cultural spaces. Local students participate in workshops to re-discover the selected space, its industrial history and its significance for the region and its inhabitants. Working together with artists, the students develop creative ways of portraying and using the space, with various artistic media ranging from stories and photography to sound, light and performance art.
In an ongoing transnational exchange between the curatorial partners, the project participants communicate with audiences across the RESCUE network. The complex relationship between history, industrial heritage, people and socio-cultural developments is reflected in a creative process that will result in a postulation of cultural strategies that might be useful towards a broader regeneration of disused industrial sites through creativity.
Working so closely with students and their surroundings, RESCUE enables ongoing grass-roots cultural exchange between participants and local citizens, who will be invited to participate in the performances, presentations and exhibitions that the children and artists develop.
Project results include site-specific works from and for the selected locations; tools and analysis for cultural engagement with abandoned spaces; innovative models to reclaim disused industrial sites for the arts; dissemination of applied cultural engagement with the history of labour and industrial heritage; audience development in the sense of inclusion, interaction and engagement with cultural heritage and contemporary artistic practice; transnational mobility of cultural actors, artists and artworks.
