Every year C:NTACT launches stage-, film-, radio- and journalistic productions in Denmark and elsewhere. Our core objective is to provide a platform for living encounters between people with different backgrounds in order to create dialogue and reconciliation. Our principal task is to nurture and encourage the ability to communicate thoughts, dreams, ideas, and visions.
C:NTACT offers a wide variety of production processes and workshops – primarily for and with young people. Our target groups cooperate with our professional artists, teachers, and directors who assist them in creating and developing artistic products for large audiences. Through theatre, film, radio and other media C:NTACT creates intercultural encounters between people who otherwise would not have met.
C:NTACT’s starting point is always the personal story rising from each individual’s own reality. C:NTACT believes that our personal stories bind us together as human beings. We constantly define and reflect the world around us through our stories. The personal story offers possible worlds to us; when we relate our stories, we present our perspective on the world. Consequently, our young participants have a close personal relation to the artistic material, at the same time gaining experience and awareness of artistic modes of expression, such as theater and film.
The participants are met at eye level – but they are also met with demands. Demands are highly significant in every artistic process which – besides learning basic methods and techniques – is also about being able to cooperate and develop a common project.
C:NTACT believes that insight into the various techniques, methods, and frames of reference can be instrumental in creating greater understanding and tolerance – and we believe that our stories are capable of constituting a platform for developing “the common third”. Likewise, we believe in the broad concept of culture; that culture goes way beyond mere ethnicity and national borders.
When working with theatre cooperations, we usually follow three steps:
C:NTACT always works with local theatre professionals and social organisations to set a theme relevant to the local audience they want to address, and to engage people in society who do not normally find themselves on stage––but have every right to stand there. In every single country we have visited during the years, we have entered profound partnerships with local talents and producers with whom we develop our method. We never not just arrive with a ready-made concept. Instead, we learn from new colleagues and participants––every time.
Over the years, we have worked with many organisations: NAKIPELO, Kharkiv Crisis Infocenter (Ukraine), Ma3mal 612 Think Factory (Jordan), Jordanian Women’s Union (Jordan), Hillbrow Theatre (South Africa), Irbid Art Theatre Troupe (Jordan), MedeArt (Jordan), Hala for Art Production (Egypten), NAYA for Training and Community Development (Jordan), ActionAid, ActionAid Regional Invitiative (Jordan), Community Development Committee (Jordan), Palīdzēsim (Latvia), The Danish Cultural Institute in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (Latvia).
Contact our creative director Henrik Hartmann for further information about C:NTACT’s international work and cooperations.
STORIES UNTOLD presents the unique stories of eleven exceptional women from across the Middle East and North Africa region. Read more about the project here.