The Belgium/Flanders and Netherlands centres of the ITI hosted the 37th World Congress in Antwerp and Den Bosch from 19 to 22 September. Under the motto ‘Embrace and Connect’, over 200 delegates from 44 national centres from all continents came together to discuss new projects, elect a board and take a stand on the problems of the crisis-ridden global situation from the perspective of the Performing Arts. In the opening speeches, the Brazilian director and author Luanda Casella referred to the subversive imaginative power of the arts to mobilise social movements and Milo Rau, the director of the Vienna Festival, reported on the current struggle of Central and Eastern European theatres against the dismantling of democracy (Milo Rau: How to Resist, published in Freitag 24.9.24).
The charter of the global ITI association, which has been revised in recent months, now provides for the rotation of countries that have been represented on the Executive Council for several terms, such as Germany and the USA, in favour of new candidates. Under the leadership of President Jessica Kahwaa (Uganda), who was elected directly by the General Assembly for the first time, an almost entirely new eleven-member Executive Council is also taking office. The following were elected from the list of candidates put forward by the centres: Lina Tal (Jordan), Latefa Ahrrare (Morocco), Christos Georgiou (Cyprus), Levan Khetaguri (Georgia), Guy Coolen (Belgium/Flanders), Akosua Abdallah (Ghana), Lloyd Nyikazino (Zimbabwe), Chen Yongquan (China), Yveyi Yi (Republic of Korea), Jeff Fagundes (Brazil), Roberto Cayuqueo (Chile).
The German centre took part in the congress with a delegation led by ITI President Yvonne Büdenhölzer and Director Thomas Engel. The delegation included Cornelia Dümcke / Representative of the ITI in the UNESCO Civil Society Forum, Matthias Gehrt / Heritage and Diversity Forum, Nora Amin / Charter Advisory Group, Juliane Zellner / future Director of the ITI Centre Germany, Malin Nagel / ITI Academy, Milena Gehrt / Network of Emerging Arts Professionals and, at the invitation of the Congress, Alexander Stillmark / Theatre in Conflict Zones Network and Axel Tangerding / Music Theatre Now Network. Together with the Artists Rights Committee of the ITI, Yvonne Büdenhölzer introduced a resolution, which was unanimously adopted by the General Assembly, calling on the organisation to step up its efforts to protect all threatened and persecuted artists, regardless of their ethnic, national, religious, social or cultural identity, to strengthen the mobility of artists as a factor of cultural diversity and to join the global campaign ‘No Future without Culture’ for the creation of a separate UN sustainability goal.
The centres Vietnam (2026) and Brazil (2027) have already extended an invitation for the 38th World Congress.