EBA – Europe Beyond Access

EUROPE BEYOND ACCESS (EBA) is Europe's largest and most influential transnational initiative aimed at promoting the active participation of disabled artists in mainstream dance and theater. Since 2018, the program has been supporting disabled artists in strengthening their position in the contemporary performing arts. Now, the initiative, in which Kampnagel Hamburg is involved, is receiving an additional 2 million Euros from the European Union's Creative Europe program – a sum that will be doubled by the EBA consortium. The initiative will run for four years, from 2024 to 2027.

EBA 2 (2024-2027)

The program will:

• commission and present dozens of new dance and theater works created by artists with disabilities. In addition to three major international co-productions, 19 new locally commissioned works and 20 presentations of existing touring works will be shown in ten countries.

• support disabled artists in the international dissemination of their innovative artistic practices, helping to overcome the artistic and spatial isolation that disabled artists experience to a particular degree. Hundreds of artists from across Europe will participate in residencies, workshops, and multinational artistic laboratories.

• build a network of leading European umbrella organizations committed to presenting and commissioning dance and theater artists of the highest artistic caliber. The project's ten core organizations will collaborate with dozens of other cultural institutions to present artistic work and exchange best practices.

• take appropriate action in the broad performing arts market and promote understanding that the European cultural sector urgently needs to break down barriers for disabled artists.

• take appropriate measures in the broad performing arts market and promote understanding that the European cultural sector urgently needs to break down barriers for disabled artists.

The four-year program involves key European networks and transnational institutions working to expand cultural access across Europe. These include:

Creative Europe Networks

• IETM International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts
• European Dancehouse Network
• European Festival Association
• On the Move
• Big Pulse Dance Alliance

Other european networks

• ELIA: European Network of Higher Arts Education

National networks

• Flemish Arts Institute
• UnLabel – Transnational & German performing arts company and specialist in political exchange

More information about Europe Beyond Access is available on the project website. There you will find examples of artists who have been supported by the project, films dealing with the artistic ideas of EBA artists, and learning materials aimed at three target groups: mainstream cultural managers, cultural policymakers, and disabled artists.

2018-2022

As a European collaborative project, Europe Beyond Access will provide massive support over the next 4 years to artists with disabilities to break through the glass ceiling of the contemporary theater and dance sector: the aim is to promote the careers of those who are still massively marginalized as artists with disabilities, to provide their projects with more professional frameworks and production conditions, and to raise their international profile through active touring. With the seven partner institutions, a network of leading mainstream organizations is to be created, which commit themselves to commissioning, producing and presenting works by artists with disabilities in their main programs. In this way, and through appropriate outreach work, the works of artists with disabilities will be freed from the image of "amateurism" that is wrongly attached to them and their degradation as "social projects"; European audiences and professionals will be more interested in the high-quality and innovative works of those artists.

Over the next 4 years, a total of 4 million euros will be made available for this purpose; 2 million of this from funding from the "Creative Europe" program, and a further 2 million from the project partners themselves.

The co-partners of the project are: British Council (UK), Onassis Cultural Centre (Greece); Holland Dance Festival (Netherlands), Per.Art (Serbia), Skånes Dansteater (Sweden), Oriente Occidente (Italy).