With the mill to Krokus

Scenekunstbruket recently arranged a professional trip to the Krokus Festival in Belgium, and 32 participants from counties and municipalities took part in three packed days of performing arts, conversations, discussions, experiences and seminars. The aim of the field trip was to see new performing arts for a young audience, for the network to get to know each other and us, and to keep the professional discussions going.

The crocus festival

Located in the Flemish city of Hasselt, the Crocus Festival is the largest theater festival focused on young audiences in Belgium. The festival is based at the city's cultural center, and during the three days we were there we saw 12 performances and attended two seminars.

The festival visit started with the performance Hokus Pokus, with the Swiss company Philippe Saire:

In addition to this, we have seen shadow theater, puppet theater, dance, storytelling theater, performances where the audience sits in the middle of the hall on rolling office chairs, light shows, and a whole lot more. The themes have had a wide range, and a festival visit like this shows which currents in performing arts for children and young people are making themselves felt in Europe, and the rest of the world.

Professional focus

The impressions have been many, and Monday and Tuesday morning started with a seminar. Monday morning was organized by the EU project PUSH, where both we and Krokus are partners. After some information from the various participating countries, artists who have participated in the laboratories and about the three main teams in the project: gender, overprotection and migration, we discussed in groups. It was interesting to keep these conversations in mind when watching the subsequent performances. How were gender and minorities portrayed? Did the companies dare to show plays that broke with traditional gender role patterns? Can children tolerate seeing nudity on stage? Art you can't understand?

We also brought performing artist Huy Le Vo with us from Norway, who followed a separate program through the festival under the auspices of PUSH.

Think local, create global

On Tuesday morning, we heard from performing artists and festivals in Tunisia, Chile, Brazil and India about the state of the performing arts in their countries, and how they experience contact with Europe. Are we achieving genuine cultural exchange? How is the conversation about quality in the different countries? This seminar also ended with group work, and we had a nice conversation with a group of delegates from several other countries. For them, the theme of "over-protection" from the day before was extremely relevant, as the situation for art for children and young people in several other places has changed dramatically in recent years, limiting their ability to show certain performances and themes.

It has been very useful to see a rich selection of performances in different genres, from several different countries and with different themes. It is interesting to discuss the concept of quality with colleagues from other countries and, not least, to see how a festival like our own Showbox works.

In addition to all the professional stuff, it was great to see the crocuses bloom, learn the difference between different types of Belgian waffles, and get to know more people in our network!