Exciting Podcast news! During ICAF’23 we had the absolute pleasure of hosting Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly, co-hosts of the cultural democracy podcast Meanwhile in an abandoned warehouse (miaaw.net), who were invited to attend this year’s festival to meet with festival participants and produce a series of podcasts to help capture the energy of the festival and…

Just over two weeks ago now, ICAF 2023 drew to a close…and what a beautiful, inspiring and memorable festival edition it proved to be! For those who attended ICAF, whilst the festival is still fresh in our minds, we would like to kindly ask you to fill out our ICAF 2023 Participant Survey. The survey…

Rhizome In the festival programme, the description of events scheduled for our final day together includes a passage that eloquently captures the spirit and purpose of ICAF. “Over the past four days – and if we count the residency projects, much longer – we have been exploring sounds of change rising from many different community…

The idea of “meeting” is at the core of all the work we do as community artists. Here at the festival, we are meeting with one another in every sense of the word. Over the course of the past few days, some of us have been meeting others for very first time, and also meeting…

The work of community artists is inherently diverse and in a perpetual state of change. We continue to explore, refine, and reinvent this calling that draws us all together across our differences and geographies. Our theme this year at ICAF is The Sound of Change. Even within the simplicity of these words, there room for…

ICAF Blog 3, Thursday 31 March, 2023 The stories we tell In one of the afternoon workshop sessions, Catherine Koekoek of Rotterdam Wijktheater read aloud a short passage from Adriana Cavarero’s book, Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood. Caverero is writing about what she considers to be one of the most beautiful scenes in The Odyssey.…

Blog 2 Opening evening March 29, 2023 If you have ever played a part in creating a theatre production, you will know that it’s always a challenge to work out just how your show should start. In those opening moments, what can the performers do that will artfully draw a multitude of individual spectators into…

[Will’s Blog 1. March 29] And so it begins—The International Community Arts Festival 2023!  In March of 2020, a certain uncertainty that was unfolding around the planet meant that Edition 8 of the festival could not be the traditional full-on gathering of artists coming to Rotterdam. Nevertheless, our intrepid crew of producers managed, as we…

The runup to ICAF 2023 kicks off with Drama Box’s online programme series  Join us online via Drama Box’s Facebook Page or Youtube Channel this Friday, 13 January at 10am CET / 5pm GMT+8 to hear more from Mekong Cultural Hub.  The runup to ICAF 2023 officially begins this Friday, 13 January, with the first…