our next nwe mkrs festival is taking place wednesday january 29th, 2025
We warmly invite you to our next NWE MKRS Festival event taking place on Wednesday January 29th 19.00-22.00h at Podium Islemunda, Rotterdam.
As you may well know, NWE MKRS is our annual event that connects, inspires, celebrates and gives a stage to young community arts talents from the Netherlands. For 2024/5 we are delighted to introduce Terry Brochard as our new maker. Terry’s approach to community arts lies in the collaboration between, what he calls, the two worlds of the analytical and the creative brain. The analytical brain helps Terry to recognize patterns, to sharpen goals and to structure processes. The creative brain, on the other hand, asks him to let go, to experiment and to make unexpected connections. Together these two worlds form a fascinating duet: structure and imagination, logic and intuition.
As part of his NWE MKRS trajectory, Terry is working with a group of participants with non-congenital brain injury (NAH). In NAH players, the brain sometimes works slightly differently, which requires a patient, creative approach that at the same time brings a rich uniqueness as the participants share and inspire unexpected insights and ideas. Terry’s process is a search for how our thinking and doing are connected – both on and off stage.
ICAF NWE MKRS 2025 will be a key moment for Terry to introduce his practice and process in more detail. This will be accompanied by a rich programme that kicks off with a webinar by Héctor Aristizábal (Colombia), a therapist, actor, director, and activist with over 40 years of experience, focussing on climate justice and mental health in the Colombian context. In 2000, Hector founded ImaginAction in the USA, an organization through which he has collaborated in over 50 countries, using theater to transform conflicts and activate collective trauma healing processes. In 2017, Héctor returned to Colombia, co-founding DreamingAction and Re-Conectando to support cultural transformation and healing within the framework of the peace agreement.
Accompanying the lecture, will be a performance by choreographer and dancer Amparo González Sola (Argentina). Amparo’s work ranges from dance performances to participatory projects and is influenced by her feminist activism and her experience of migration. It is from this approach and perspective that Ampara will present ‘Distances’ as part of NWE MKRS. Delving into the complexities of empathy and shared experience, Distances questions the possibility of resonating with the experience of others, even when separated by great literal and figurative distances. By focusing on small gestures, the work invites us to reconsider the dynamics of gaze, distance, and closeness as we reflect on what it means to bear witness.
Join us for an evening together that celebrates new and established talent, nationally and internationally, and explores, in-depth, our selected ICAF theme of ‘space’ from new approaches, potentials, and possibilities with a focus on head space and connection. Tickets can be reserved now, at the following link. Find out more via the ICAF Platform, here.