EEA is excited to be a partner for Platform Shift+, a successful larger scale cooperation project announced by the European Commission under their European Culture Funding Stream Creative Europe. It consists of 11 partners from 9 countries - ten theatres and a university.
The artistic network PLATFORM shift+ was created to meet the new challenges of producing theatre for young people in the digital age. The partners have identified the urgent need to engage with digital technology in order to understand the target audience. Today's young people are digital natives who move naturally between real and virtual worlds. Theatre for them must respond to this new reality to sustain and grow existing audiences and build new audiences for the future. This will enable theatre to accurately portray young people's reality and inspire them with a belief in the theatre as a unique live medium for modern times.
To achieve this the partners of PLATFORM shift+ plan a major investment in the professionalisation of theatre-makers on an international level. PLATFORM shift+ will develop 40 theatre productions based on newly developed plays/concepts, correlated to the reality of the digital age. In more than 50 activities it will connect theatre-makers directly with young people in an artistic dialogue.
An extensive programme of interrelated activities will encourage transnational exchanges of artists/artistic products and provide training in digital technology through practice and international Creative Forums.
At the end of the project, 10 Creative Forums all over Europe will offer training programmes and tools for sustainability of progress and ambition.
The overall project has been awarded the maximum grant of 2,000,000 Euros (which is 42% of the total budget) and will run from 2014 - 2018