C:ntact

C:NTACT is an independent theatre and media organisation dedicated to social and cultural integration and education, based at the Edison stage in Copenhagen, Denmark. 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: RECRUITMENT: Together, we gather a group of participants who represent different social backgrounds. The project will typically be given a headline signalling a current social issue. WORKSHOPS: The participants are taught various tools to tell and share their own stories. Together with professional artists and each other, they cooperate to bring a common vision into being. PRODUCTION: The project ends with a stage performance or documentary film that can be shown to a broader audience, who can mirror their own reality to what is presented on stage. Contact have 5 employed and 20 partners, main funding is private funding and goverment and municipality funding, in Denmark and abroad. 7 to 12 million DKR is C:ntact budgetary ressources in a year.