Gestalten

Returning from Casablanca Part 2

dgv speaks to Tommi Laitio Programme Officer at the European Cultural Foundation and organizer of the Casablanca Workshop.

How did you come up with the initial idea for the ECF's magazine workshop and how did you select the participants?

I was hired in 2005 to start a media program for the European Cultural Foundation. After some experiments with building media capacity and supporting reportage, we decided to direct our activities towards youth and popular cultures. As the ECF in general focuses in its work on supporting small and mid-sized cultural organisations, we decided to explore the world of independent magazines. For years, we have supported networking of essayistic cultural journals (www.eurozine.com) and working with pop culture magazines was an idea to tackle independent print media on another level.

The idea for the conference came together after I met the Editor in chief of the Turkish magazine Bant when I visited Istanbul in late 2005 – funny enough for a conference of Eurozine. Aylin Güngör was telling me about the hurdles in making an independent publication and how she would love to compare her experiences with colleagues. I saw this as something very much in line with the goals of the ECF as a supporter of cross-border collaborations in the field of culture. So we gave it a go.

The magazines were selected on both quality and geographic basis. We looked for magazines that had ambitious graphic design, interests in broader Europe and published by independent publishers. I must confess that the first group was selected based on our interests as organisers and recommendations by journalists we knew and cultural organisations the ECF works with. But for Casablanca, our primary focus was broadening the geographic spread.


What would you consider the role of magazines in the often claimed intercultural exchange?

Well, it really depends on the magazines themselves. I think every magazine tries to differentiate itself from the others by showing things not covered yet by others or offering a new perspective. What I would love to see magazines doing more would be showing the local setting in a broader and more inclusive way and also having even more curiosity towards phenomena outside the usual suspects – especially geographically. In my mind a good magazine gives things their own twist and I would love to see magazines covering the issues of immigration or multiculturalism in a fresh and unconventional manner.


How do you envision the future meetings of the workshop group? Will it be more about practical issues and the exchange of experiences and creating collaborations? Or will it be more of a forum to challenge them now that there’s a bond and growing trust among the participants?

I find the collegial professional exchange of views highly important. What I would really like to strengthen is discussion on “what� – I think when it comes to “how� we had a good start in Casablanca. In Casablanca the workshop on cross-Mediterranean hip hop was very much the way I would like to see things developing – international comparisons strongly attached to the local setting.

There’s a competition in Germany called the “Lead Awards" and each year they select a "visual lead magazine". From your more European perspective, which magazines would you consider to be exceptional in the visual domain? And which are exceptional from their content quality?

As the organiser this is of course somewhat awkward to answer. The fact that I do not understand many of the languages makes it very difficult for me to judge their content. From a visual point of view I value the way Bant from Turkey goes around the easy option of using standard studio photography by commissioning young local illustrators. In terms of content, I feel that Omagiu (Romania) and Eksklusiv’s (Poland) ambitions to dig deep into the national buzz are admirable. And when it comes to quality writing, I have seldom read such good music journalism as in Plan B.


Beyond your magazine project you are also involved with several projects about video and the authorship of children and teenagers. What are they about?

We are currently preparing a big festival on user-generated video content made by young Europeans. We want to show that young people do care. They have a fresh take on their society, they are willing to take a stand and their understanding of visual messages is on a very different level than their parents or teachers. The Stranger Festival in June 2008 will show groundbreaking, provocative and emotionally moving videos done by under 25-year-olds across Europe. Through working with cultural minorities and underprivileged teenagers, we also want to point out the fact that Europe is much more diverse than we tend to think. The festival brings together some 3,000 young people, NGOs, teachers, commercial actors, public broadcasters and established media.
We build the festival on our five-year-long work with video and youth in theoneminutesjr project (www.theoneminutesjr.org) where we have already organised some 60 video workshops in 40 different countries and where more than 1,000 young people from 65 nationalities have made their case in a video of exactly one minute.

From your experiences, to what extent do these teenagers have a new or different attitude towards print magazines?

I just know this from the world of newspapers. A lot of 20-year-olds nowadays do not see the point of subscribing to a newspaper. This is however, very often interpreted as not caring which is not true. They very often tend to read their newspapers online and get their news from completely other sources than their parents. In that sense our realities are not the same.