Lifelong Learning I Feed Forward I Audience Development
 | The process of feedback is ideally a gentle – if sometimes passionate- exchange of gifts. It needs to be focused, yet open, acknowledging subjectivity in order to be constructive for all parties involved. When it works like that, it is a core component of qualitative and quantitative audience development and very liberating for the artists and curators/programmers. It then becomes Feed Forward.
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One of the most challenging and rewarding experiences incorporating elements from my method, body/word, Participatory Leadership, Nonviolent Communication and the Das Arts Feedback Method. This project was offered between December 2014 and June 2017 by the Marketing and Communication Department of the Stegi-Onassis Cultural Centre to more than 370 participating audience members, artists and curators.
In all honesty, when I first proposed this project to Stegi, I did not realise how huge it was. And more often than not, that’s for the best. It is a distinct and enormously nourishing experience. In a nutshell, I created a dynamic cocktail of my personal method body/word and world acclaimed feedback-feedforward practices which I would introduce to a selection of the Stegi Friends, artists or curators presenting work in Stegi. We would then all meet and enjoy this cocktail aiming in a most generous exchange of perspectives. This cocktail would constantly get updated to suit the needs of each specific combination of artists and audience, as well as new knowledge on the subject of Feedback/Feed Forward and of course the accumulating experience of the process.
Things were not always smooth during the meetings. Quite the contrary. The opposite would be dishonest and against basic creative expression principles. But it definitely always was generous and reached full effect long after the end of the actual meeting. More than 40 artists and curators from Greece and around the world were introduced and responded to the bespoke methodology. A total of approximately 650 audience members from very different backgrounds as well as experts, from 10 y.o.to 81 y.o. participated, about 50% of them more than 3 times over the years the project was running. Most of them came from the Stegi Friends community, while there have also been a number of guests from outside, the total increasing every year.
This practice has been informing my ongoing research on feedback-feedforward tools and reshaping educaational and creative applications, since.
A warm thank you to all in the Marketing and Educational Programs in Stegi, responsible for welcoming my original idea and the constant updates, to the artists and curators for trusting my work and of course to the participating Friends and guests. Though I can not mention their names, I hope they know how grateful I am to them.
To give you an idea of the wide range of artistic projects we looked closely into, here are the people whose work was the meeting occasion: Α. Azas & P. Tsinikoris, T. Abazis, P.Apergi, K. Arfara, Blitz (C. Passalis, A. Papoulia, G. Valais), Y.Boudali & S. Tzoumerkas, M. Chryssikopoulos, P. Dragonas, T. Glinatsis, Z. Hatziadoniou, A. Hioti, D. Karantzas, I. Karayian Kohar, N. Karathanos, C. Karras, M. Konstandatos, M. Lavda, G. Mavragani, M. Marmarinos, P. Mexis, A. Panagiotakou, R. Pateraki, G. Petrou, Rimini Protokoll (H. Haug και D. Wetzel), Rootless Root (L. Kapetanea & J. Frucek), A. Servetalis, P.Stamatopoulou, P. Tsiavos, G. Vardarou, K. Vita, S. Vgenopoulou, D. Xanthopoulos.
Premier: December 10th, 2014, Duration: Until June 2017, Stegi – Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens, Greece