After an innovative, two-year long cooperation model, the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) has concluded its participation in the project
Islands of Kinship with a valuable publication. Working closely together with five visual arts institutions in Europe (Prague, Bratislava, Bitol/Skopje, Cologne and Helsinki), the project addressed issues of accessibility, fair representation and participation, which are essential for the sustainable functioning of art and cultural institutions.
Within the framework of the project
Islands of Kinship, the LCCA organised several major exhibitions and public programmes taking place at the Latvian National Museum of Art (Wacław Szpakowski. Riga Notebooks, 2023), Riga Art Space (Decolonial Ecologies, 2022/2023), Pauls Stradiņš Medical History Museum (How I’ve Been Feeling Lately, 2023), as well as outside the usual cultural event routes in regional districts and Riga (LCCA Summer School, 2023; Survival Kit 14, 2023; All’s Good Between Us, 2024).
The collaborations, exhibitions and programmes that were initiated as part of the Islands of Kinship project raised awareness of accessibility issues, promoted the values of an open society and gave the possibility to mediate these topics to the wider Latvian public.The experience, insights and good practices learned during the project have been compiled in the publication Islands of Kinship: A Collective Manual for Sustainable and Inclusive Art Institutions. "This book is an invaluable reflection on the experience we have acquired - it is both asking critical questions and trying to provide answers, but above all, the book encourages to think about possible changes in the myriad of social, economic and ecological crises," Andra Silapētere, curator of the LCCA, emphasises the importance of the publication.
With this publication, the project participants hope that their efforts will go beyond the
Islands of Kinship network, as well as inspire and encourage other arts institutions, artists and activists, educators, students and everyone else to make their cultural activities more conscious, open and inclusive.
More about the project:
www.islandsofkinship.org Read more
