What makes us a network?

In the era of the internet, we are more connected than ever through invisible yet active networks that impact us as users of social media and not only. As citizens of a globalised world, decisions by major nations also have local effects. Media and global interconnectedness have a strong ‘domino effect’ in our lives – yet what happens when individuals or organisations join forces in the form of networks for goals that go beyond socialisation and personal interests? 

This was the question for ‘What Makes Us a Network?’ / B.Network, a two-day event curated by researchers Giuliana Ciancio (Liv.in.g.) and Luisella Carnelli (Fitzcarraldo Foundation) that took place in the frame of OperaEstate festival / B.Motion 2024 (27–29/08/2024). Under the initiative of the artistic co-director Michele Mele, this event offered a fresh approach and a much-needed clarification of what a performing arts network is, or could be. To bridge theory with practice, cultural professionals from Italy and abroad, who are key partners of the festival as well as the Centro per la Scena Contemporanea (CSC) of Bassano del Grappa, were invited to reflect collectively on various aspects of performing arts in relation to their respective networks. This topic will be further explored during the upcoming edition of B.Motion 2025 (29–31/08/2025), that will shift from the idea of a ‘network’ to the notion of ‘cooperation’, in an event co-curated with Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. 

A glance at Italian performing arts networks

In Italy, three major performing arts networks act as mediators between the performing arts industry and the government; ADEP, AIDAP and AIDAF are associations dedicated to dance that act under the auspices of the Associazione Generale Italiana Dello Spettacolo, AGIS. This landscape is also composed of alliances of production companies and centres, theatre institutions, festivals and foundations of performing arts – often also members of the above-mentioned governmental associations – that join to support artists. During the B.Network meeting, founders or representatives of some of these networks offered a brief overview of their contribution to the fourfold process of art-making in the country: research and creation, production, promotion and distribution.

Circuito Regionale Multidisciplinare della Puglia, founded in 1979, is one of the oldest networks of performing arts in Italy, active in the region of Puglia while the long-term Scenario and Anticorpi XL Network, established in 1987 and 2007 respectively, are networks dedicated to supporting emerging performing artists. Anticorpi XL Network specialises in assisting choreographers with less than five years’ professional experience in danza d’autore, briefly a genre seeking choreographic originality. DNAappunti coreografici gives dramaturgical and choreographic guidance to a selected work-in-progress by an artist under 35 while FONDO is another network for emerging artists introduced by Santarcangelo Festival, based on a member-sourced fee for funding performing arts productions. In-Box also works with emerging theatre and performing artists while BoNo! supports the collaboration between a choreographer and a musician, and the distribution of the project outcome. Vene.Re is a three-member network providing support for artistic creation within the region of Veneto. 

These partners, joined by international and other Italian cultural professionals, curators and programmers, were invited by Ciancio and Carnelli to engage in a horizontal exchange of ideas and knowledge regarding the role of networks, ways of building and sustaining them, as well as evaluating their failures and successes. 

A brief ‘anatomy’ of a network

Ciancio’s primary focus was to introduce networks of performing arts as mobilisations of people or organisations to influence arts policy, and advocate collective actions for changing those policies, norms and regulations that have been shaped by neoliberalism. Networks, according to Ciancio, can strive to redefine reality by addressing the failures of neoliberal economy (and mindset) through identifying urgent issues and turning them visible by naming them, proposing new trends and advocating for them. Especially at a European level, they act in solidarity with each other ‘in the spaces between top-down policy-making and bottom-up actions’, in her words. As a sort of active citizenship and co-imagination, they serve as an extension of the public sphere in an era of social injustice and geopolitical crisis where democracy is failing. For instance, the International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts (IETM), based in Brussels, clearly fits in this frame. With a mission to advocate for the value of the contemporary performing arts, IETM members ‘collect evidence, conduct relevant research, produce policy papers and run campaigns’ (online). Also, some of the B.Network guests confirmed their network’s connection with advocacy for the freedom of the Artist, or for changing methodologies in art-making (such as moving away from product orientation to giving more time for research), for allocating funding more equally, or for adopting an ecological approach to arts distribution and mobility, and reclaiming public space through performance.

As implied within the compound word network (net+work), such a mobilisation may be understood as a system of interconnected people, organisations and institutions at work for making ‘things’, such as art policies, work for the benefit of arts, artists and their audience as well as the integration of arts into society. A network emerges during times of crisis to fixwhat does not work and respond to the urges of specific individuals or groups with common needs. 

Strongly related to the sociopolitical and economic realities in the present, networks are space- and time-sensitive organisms and human-based systems informed by the individuals and organisations they consist of. As Ciancio claims, a network ‘starts as a form of socialisation around burning issues’, as an informal group of like-minded people, who share trust and reliability with each other and gather to resolve issues collectively yet within constructive contradictions and negotiations. 

In this frame, several projects co-funded by the European Union work in essence as informal project-based and short-term networks. For example, Dance Well – Movement Research for Parkinson (represented in the meeting by OperaEstate staff member Alessia Zanchetta), questions ‘what is beauty, and strives for a non-judgemental inclusion of bodies with or without Parkinson’s disease in society’, while Empowering Dance – The Soft Skills Teaching and Learning Approach (2020–2023), co-led by CSC, derives from a lineage of collaborative projects between European partners that started with Communicating Dance in 2013. Other examples such as Dancing Museums (2018–2021 and 2015–2017) and Performing Gender(2013 –2015; 2017–2019; 2020–2023) were built on the logic of continuity of a theme and have been some of the most successful networked and collaborative projects between key European partners in the field of performing arts.

Networks often have a limited lifespan unless they manage to survive through a constant evolution, adaptability, evaluation and redefinition of goals, priorities and values. As one guest pointed out, ‘why are we together?’ must be a constant question for a network to survive. In this case, continuity and longevity, even through transformation, become criteria of reliability and efficiency. For instance in 2023, EDN changed its name from European Dancehouse Network to European Dance Development Network to reflect the collective identity of its new members. First emerging in 2005 as a group of seven dance houses and legally established in 2009, EDN gradually evolved from a scheme to promote artist mobility, audience and dance development into one that encompasses sustainable modes of producing and distributing dance and the promotion of equity within the dance sector, and advocates for its broader social relevance. Aerowaves grew from a small London-based initiative back in 1996 to an almost 50-member network supporting the distribution of dance works by emerging artists across Europe – under the guidance of SHIFT Culture – along with shaping dance criticism, mediation and curation of performing arts. 

A network usually works within a set of rules, agreements or protocols in order for members to be able to stay together in an organised manner, sometimes with membership fees to help implement collective goals or compensate those actively engaged in its function. It needs to be transparent as well as nourished through spaces for exchange, such as physical or online meetings – conferences, assemblies, think-in sessions, webinars and other formats – that can help build bonding and provide shared experiences. It is also necessary for networks to stay open so that new members can enter and older ones leave, as well as to be intergenerational so that more experienced members have the chance to transmit their knowledge. Yet as a network grows in size and the anonymity among its members may increase, thinking through the prism of ‘you are the network’, as one participant observed, contributes to keeping a network a personal affair.

As seen from the above, networks serve to unite and empower isolated individuals or organisations, and in the best case to solve and prevent problems, passing a situation from individual into collective hands. Of course, networks may also perpetuate the tactics of exclusion by emphasising the interests of those within it, risking becoming a partnership for the principal benefit of its members. In this frame, there is often a confusion between network and networking, the latter usually connected with expanding personal or professional contacts for serving interests. How, then, can current or future networks stay rooted to their mission to promote changes in a society heavily driven by neoliberalism? An upcoming event at the next OperaEstate festival in summer 2025 reflects on international co-operation as a mode of partnership. It will be interesting to see what this may add to the idea of a ‘network’ to further support ethical and collaborative ways of contributing to slow revolutions in the field of performing arts – and beyond. ●