All you can Art and Reakt intensify collaboration
Feb. 28, 2022
From March the outreach of All you can Art – the in-depth collaboration between Kunsthal Rotterdam and Instituto Bueno Bista Curaçao (IBB) – will extend beyond Rotterdam. During the project ‘Kunstness’, four All you can Art artists will take turns in visiting various locations of Reakt around the country. This organisation, which is part of the Parnassia Group, helps people with psychiatric problems and addiction backgrounds find their way through everyday life. Together with clients and remedial coaches of Reakt the artists will work on creating inspiring and extraordinary artworks.The kick-off of Kunstness will take place at the Reakt location in Gouda. After every three months the baton is passed on to a different All you can Art artist, in Castricum, Rotterdam and The Hague, respectively.
For a number of years now, All you can Art has been working with clients of Reakt (formerly known as Antes) over the summer, with research being conducted into how art can play a role in connecting different people and organisations. What started emerging more and more clearly was that these encounters and the practice of creating art together can greatly contribute to increasing the self-esteem of the participants – a shared goal of All you can Art and Reakt. Both parties wanted to further develop the collaboration, as it is necessary for the artists to be, and remain, present for longer periods of time to make sure that art can become a constant factor in care institutions like Reakt. The Kunstness project is now fulfilling this desire, and for the first time the All you can Art artists will now remain active in the institution for a full year.
Necessity
The artists David Bade and Tirzo Martha – the two founders of IBB – Joanna Francozappata, and Gerson Kronstadt will be present at the different Reakt locations in the country for a fixed number of days a week. The All you can Art artists will set to work with the clients and health care professionals of Reakt to create art prompted by the inner necessity that is felt in the location in question. This causes the project to reach beyond the clients and their environment. With their capacity to connect, the artists will also interact with the staff and management of the organisation. What is created or what connections are made entirely depends on how the process will develop itself.