Tuesday, 16 October 2012, Ljubljana. The Atelier for Young Festival Managers in Ljubljana will provide us with more than just a toolkit to find solutions in challenging times; it will allow us to better identify our challenges by getting out of our rushing, day-to-day routine for 7 days. By now, I'm quite impressed how we, the participants and presenters, manage to make our ideas “bouncing and bubbling”, and to focus on common issues at the same time. Already after the first three days, I made new connections and discovered new artists and works. There are definitively watersheds and drainage divides between different streams of creations flowing to Edinburgh, to Avignon, to Melbourne, to Brazil or elsewhere, without merging that much. Thanks to all our conversations these various ideas actually start merging. It is great indeed to have met so many leaders of upcoming or ongoing festival adventures in such a short time: Sean Buhagiar (Malta Council for Culture and the Arts) who is trying to set up a new Nuit Blanche programme in Malta; Tom Creed (Cork Midsummer Festival, Ireland) who is challenged by coming back to his native city Cork in a new function, as both artist and festival director; French colleagues Anne Fontanesi (Centre Choregraphique National de Montpellier - Direction Mathilde Monnier) and Erika Hess (Le Cuvier Centre de développement chorégraphique) who feel the need to renew or improve their events’ identity, layouts and partnerships; Robert Crispe who is working on starting an electro-fringe festival in Australia – to mention but a few among so many thrilling projects in this group. Some words too about our mentors: just to salute Hugo De Greef’s great sense of conciliation and balance in the sessions, or the sparkling generosity of Robyn Archer. Personally, I also found fascinating some of the stories Nele Hertling told us, like the agitated birth of the East-West theatre network Theorem about ten years ago. Thanks also to Inge, Kathrin, Laura and all the team of the Atelier for their great commitment. So far, strong political issues and local realities have been discussed, reminding us, if necessary, that we all work in and speak from our specific "here and now": Dina Eldeeb (Culture Resource) from Cairo has shared her poetic and radical Art in Square project, which aims to celebrate community based artistic expressions that emerged during the Egyptian spring revolution; or Preshmay Hermon (TheaterCan) from Tel Aviv trying to set up a Voice of Conflict festival. Maybe we also have the opportunity during the upcoming days to talk about the last elections in Belgium three days ago, where a separatist and nationalist political party took over the second biggest city in this country. I would like to repeat a sentence of Graham Sheffield, Director Arts at the British Council, in his sharp presentation on Monday. Reminding on the dramatic terrorist attack in the British Council in Kabul in summer 2011, and the way the BC kept going over there, he invited us “to built cultural relations with people, not to people, as isolation is not an option". Similarly, Darko Brlek, Artistic and General Director of the Ljubljana Festival, share with us how musical exchanges continued during the Bosnian War. Our evening session at the restaurant Jezerski saw an inspiring and exciting talk with Fruzsina Szep, Programme Director of the Sziget Festival (Hungary). Her presentation of her vision and how she makes that vision a reality sparked many questions among all participants. The how and why of our projects; our management of confidence between artists, politics, partners, audiences; the challenge of crisis – a motto of the Slovenian art collective NSK comes to my mind that fits well with all these concerns, our discussions in the past two days and our stay in Ljubljana: Art is fanatism, that demands diplomacy. By Julien Carrel (L'Entorse, France), participant Atelier LJUBLJANA 2012, 16 October 2012, Ljubljana, Slovenia Related news and links: • Atelier News #7: "Once an Atelier, always an Atelier" • Atelier News #6: in-depth discussions of the essentials of the previous days • Atelier News #5: Cultural visits, press conference, book launch, boat trip and more • Atelier News #4: "Mutual inspiration in an ideas arena" • Atelier News #3: “Bouncing ideas and streams of creations” • Atelier News #2: Festivals in unusual contexts – a lot of food for thought • Atelier News #1: “Welcome, fools, to our world” • Daily blog by participant Gemma Connell (UK) • Robyn Archer opens Atelier LJUBLJANA 2012: “We are all participants“ • Atelier for Young Festival Managers LJUBLJANA 2011 starts today: Follow online! • Public invited to opening of Atelier LJUBLJANA 2012 with Robyn Archer • Atelier LJUBLJANA 2012: intense exclusive training and high-level public events