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2007 OISTAT Education Commission Report

Jul 1, 2007
OISTAT Congress, Prauge June 2007


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Marina Raytchinova
Chair of Education Commission


Past Meeting


The 2006 meeting of the Education Commission was held in YOKOHAMA 15-17 JUNE 2006 and hosted by OISTAT Centre Japan and World Light Fair.
22 international delegates attended the meeting. The agenda included two working sessions and two open session of presentations on themes: “Education in Lighting and Projection Design” and “Pedagogical Approaches to Theatre Arts Education” . This was the first EduCom meeting that involved international students participation and joint presentations of professors and students in the open sessions. Students from the USA, New Zealand, Finland and Korea attended the meeting and took part in the sessions together with their professors.  This is a new trend that we feel interested to develop in our next meetings. The meeting in Japan was a success and I would like to take this opportunity to thank OISTAT Centre Japan and Hideki Nakajima, main host – organizer, for this wonderful event.
 

Next Meetings

2007
We will have a non-sponsored meeting of the Education Commission at PQ’07 opened to all teachers attending PQ. The aim is to present the activities of the commission to a wider audience and to raise informal discussion on the present and future of international exchange in theatre design and technology education across the world.

All teachers and practitioners, interested in internationalism in theatre education are cordially invited to attend. The meeting will take place at DAMU, Karlova 26, Prague, at 1 pm on June 18th.

An informal Teachers’ dinner meeting will be held at restaurant Na Stridacce (very close to Vistavishte) on June 19th at 7pm.

The Education Commission annual business meeting for 2007 will take place in VANCOUVER, BC, Canada,  and will be hosted by CITT/ICTS OISTAT CENTRE in collaboration with the University of British Columbia (UBC). The dates of the meting are August 16th – 18th

Held in conjunction with THE CITT/ICTS RENDEZ-VOUS 2007 ANNUAL CONFERENCE, the CITT/ICTS - OISTAT Education Commission meeting will provide a rich program of presentations and panel discussions under the main theme:  Global Ties: Linking with the International Community in the 21st Century.

Presentations topics include:

  1. Ties with the International Community - the PQ, Scenofest and World Stage Design as examples of global forums. What do they achieve?
  2. E-learning and international educational forums in non-academic environment. How can we make the most of technology?
  3. Globalization in Education - academic exchange programs versus cyber links
  4. The Global Melting Pot: How do ties with the International Community affect the theatre practices on a national level?


The Commission business sessions will include reports and discussions on current and past projects, Scenofest’07, plans for Scenofest”11, plans for next commission meetings, membership.

2008
At the meeting in Yokohama Markku Uimmonen confirmed the invitation of Finland for 2008 in Helsinki. The meeting will be hosted by the Theatre Academy, the University of Art and Design, and the Finish Centre of OISTAT. The meeting will be dedicated to Post Graduate studies and research. It is likely that the meeting will include an extra day program of presentations by international PhD students.

2009
The Russian Centre of OISTAT has expressed wish to invite the commission to Moscow in 2009.
 

PROJECTS


SCENOFEST’07
Scenofest as the priority project of the commission focused a huge amount of efforts and work during the last three years.  Since 2003 the Scenofest idea developed and grew to an event of a very big scale. Scenofest’07 program offers lectures and workshops in all areas of theatre performance design as well as theatre technology and new media. The program attracted many students and practitioners from across the world. Application to exhibits and workshops was very huge and exceeded all expectations. Despite that we increased the numbers of workshops and workshops places it was impossible to accommodate all who wished to participate.  It is still early to evaluate Scenofest 2007, but I would like to mention some numbers:  Scenofest offered over 80 workshops with more than 1600 workshop places available. Over 7000 student and practitioners applied to register to the Scenofest workshops. Over 160 individual and group projects from over 30 countries applied to the critiqued Birds Exhibit.

Scenofest’07 has been organized and run entirely on volunteer bases. The organizing team is published on the web. However, I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to the people, who granted many hours of their professional and private life for the benefit of students from all over  the world and whose incredible enthusiasm and effort made Scenofest’07 possible:

Sean Crowley
Chris Van Goethem
Michael Ramsaur
Pamela Howard
Ian Evans
Steven Brown
Henk Van De Geest
Jean Guy Lecat
Donatella Barbieri
Petr Matásek
Weiwen Chang
Illka Louw
Ien Verbaenen
Aby Cohen
Martin Paling
Patrick Beegan

During the many months of preparation of Scenofest’07 we worked in close collaboration with the PQ organizers. I would like to thank sincerely to Daniela Pariskova and Barbara Tůmová for their remarcable support and effort.

The work on Scenofest offered good opportunities for close collaboration with the Architecture Commission and the 7th OISTAT Architecture Competition as well as with  the Technology Commission and The Costume and the Lighting working groups of the Scenography Commission. Members of these commissions are involved as leaders of several workshops as well as in the Birds Exhibit Critiques.
 

THEMATIC NETWORK IN LIGHTING DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY
A lot of good work has been done on creating database of schools and educational programs in Theatre Design and Technology. Currently the project is on hold, because the work on Scenofest took precedence. 
 

COURSE STRUCTURES/DEFINITIONS
This new project, proposed by Sjef Tilly and Ramon Ivars, aims  to respond  the needs for clear definitions of international teaching programs as well as definitions, rationalisation of terms for designers (scenographer, stage/theatre designer etc.) The work has begun already. The project aims at establishing a global matrix of courses and their structures as an international frame of reference.

 
 Updated September 2007