ISPA NEW YORK CONGRESS 2020
IZZY KINGTON
Welcome to
New York
David Baile of ISPA and Anthony Sargent of the Luminato
festival discuss their hopes and plans for ISPA’s New York
Congress, to be held in New York on 14-16 January 2020
DAVID BAILE, CEO OF THE
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY
OF PERFORMING ARTS (ISPA)
What are your plans for ISPA’s
New York Congress 2020?
e theme of the congress this year is Reframing
the Conversation: Art and Borders, which is all
about looking at issues from di erent
perspectives. e theme is particularly timely
given everything that is going on in the USA,
plus Brexit and the 30th anniversary in 2019
of the Berlin Wall coming down – there are
a lot of real and metaphoric borders that we
really want to explore.
We’re got a great planning committee,
co-chaired by Collette Brennan, CEO of
Abbotsford Convent Foundation in Australia,
and Martin Inthamoussu, general director of
SODRE in Uruguay.
As in prior years, there will be six sessions
over the course of three days, plus some regional
updates and provocations. ere’s also a number
of staples in our programme, including Pitch
New Works, where 10 artists or arts organisations
talk about the work they’re interested in either
touring or getting commissioning partners for.
We will also be running Design inking
again, which was introduced last year along the
Pitch New Works model. e idea is to showcase
ideas or programmes that have developed in one
region but could be applied in others. A couple of
years ago we also introduced the Co ee Klatch,
which is held over breakfast with tables of 10.
It’s a really intimate way to have conversations
about topics suggested beforehand by delegates.
Why is the topic of art and borders
so important right now?
e conversation for the past decade has been
about globalisation and all of a sudden countries
are prioritising nationalisation. We’re coming at
it from a cultural perspective, and also hope to
have speakers who don’t necessarily come from
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