Community Arts
#I Weld You A Colour
We live in a world full of colours, and yet our visions are limited.
In 2019, a small group of artists and activists went on a year-long journey in search of utopian visions. Following a small project at the junction of arts and crafts, the film takes us on a colourful ride, from the construction of a mobile stage to the creation of a dazzling cabaret and the performance on it. Through both poetic and sharp commentaries, this little temporary community opens the door to regions in East Germany where the right wing is on the rise again.
The film invites the audience to reimagine the future of our society through questions regarding social cohesion, the boundaries between learning and empowerment, work and play, rediscovery of old traditions and unimaginable colours.
We wish to share the social visions and practices documented in the film, and inspire as many people as possible.
You would like to screen “I Weld You A Colour”, discuss with us or support us in bringing unimaginable colours into the world? Then get in touch with us!
documentary film I 50min
A film by Eyal Davidovitch produced by Valentin Rion Schmehl.
#openpavillon
#openpavillon is a sociocultural construction site at the juncture of art and crafts.
It brings together a diverse group of people to live, work and learn together over two weeks at the Other Music Academy [OMA] in Weimar. Every year, the community defines a new task to be tackled in co-creation and learning-exchanges. The group consists of international artists, craftswo*men, children with and without special needs, exchange students, senior citizens, newly arrived and longtime neighbors of the OMA.
The basic principle is: everyone learns! Throughout the process, experts turn into students and vice-versa. Every member contributes their own life experiences to the various workshop sites.
Examples of construction projects completed until now include an outdoor “culture kitchen” made of clay and wood, a community garden, a mobile stage, and in 2021 a “culture sailboat.” #openpavillon constantly evolves from new impulses and ideas that come from a growing learning community. Out of that already emerged the city-wide workshop festival “Altenburg by the sea”, which has been nominated for the nationwide Innovation Award for Socioculture 2021.
Let’s brainstorm about how #openpavillon can respond to your community needs
Kadya Youth Choir
Are you the director of a community or school choir in search of unusual new repertoire that will delight and move your singers and audiences alike? Alan Bern’s new song cycle based on the Yiddish poetry of early 20th century; Polish-Jewish poet Kadya Molodowsky might be just the thing! Originally composed for an international youth exchange project between the Voices of Peace choir of Tel Aviv/Jaffa and the Schola Cantorum of Weimar, the songs run the gamut from playful to serious, dreamy to driving, always with beautiful, folk-like melodies and lush, emotional harmonies. The songs are accompanied by a world-class ensemble of three to six musicians led by Bern himself, who will also coach your choir in Yiddish pronunciation and expression.
Triangle Orchestra
In 2019, we brought together young classically-trained musicians from Germany, France and Poland to form a new orchestra dedicated to learning about and eventually perform the first orchestration of an almost forgotten masterpiece: “Bas Sheve,” the only surviving opera in Yiddish, composed in the 1930s in Poland by Henech Kon. The new score for chamber orchestra, mixed choir and vocal soloists is ready and waiting to be performed again by professional or semi-professional community orchestras and choirs. Preparing the work is a truly unique learning and cultural opportunity as well! We invite you to consider presenting this work! Alternatively, we can develop an entirely new music educational exchange and performance project together with you, taking the Triangle Orchestra project as a model but re-inventing the topic and the participants.
Bobe Mayses
What do you get when you bring together street theater, lifesize puppets, great music, and a medieval Yiddish story inspired by Arthurian legends? You get “bobe mayses” – “grandma stories” – full of nonsense and wisdom, tradition and irreverance. Impossible to imagine? Take a look at the trailer! Then consider bringing this gorgeous and slightly insane production to your community! We bring the story, the puppets, the props, the director, music director and designer, and the cast comes from your own community. Like all OMA community projects, Bobe Mayses is not just a theater production, it’s an amazingly rich and little-known world ready to expand the horizons of everyone who enters it!
Caravan Orchestra & Choir
A visionary orchestra international student exchange project that explores the music of the Middle East and Europe by drawing on the cultural heritages of the musicians themselves, the Caravan Orchestra won the prestigious Shimon Peres Prize in 2018. The orchestra composes and improvises its own repertoire through a co-creative process led by two brilliant co-directors, Ilya Shneyveys (Riga/Berlin/New York) and Jeryes Murkus Ballan (Nazareth/Haifa). The result is music with ancient roots and a young soul. Put another way, it rocks. You can present the Caravan Orchestra & Choir in your town for a performance or a workshop, or you can simply bring Ilya and Jeryes to work their musical magic with different cultures in your community.