RESHAPE Workbook

This Workbook is the result of RESHAPE – Reflect, Share, Practice, Experiment, a research and development project that brought together artists, art professionals, and organizations from Europe and the southern Mediterranean to create new organizational models and alternative ways of working. The project aims to respond to today’s challenges, aligning fairness, solidarity, and sustainability with the civil role of the arts. Exploring the expertise of those already experimenting with new models and ways of working, the Workbook gathers instruments for transition towards a new, fairer arts ecosystem.

The tangible results of this process are presented in the form of Prototypes, proposals that reflect and provoke the transformation of the sector, towards more equitable and more sustainable methods and ways of working. These take various forms: a game, a collection of rituals, a house, a shape-shifting department, a multitude of questions, a call for action, and many others. All contribute to positive change in the arts and its relation to society.

The prototypes engage in dialogue with a number of existing, reworked and commissioned works selected by the RESHAPE community, which we call Zeitgeist material. The authors, including artists, scholars, and critical thinkers, analyze and contextualize these challenges and draw up concepts for change.

RESHAPE encourages adopting, applying, and building on the prototypes in the everyday practices of artists, art workers, and organizations in Europe and the southern Mediterranean – indeed, all over the world, to contribute to fundamental change in the arts and society.