“Winternights is an initiative of SoAP (Space oriented Artistic Practice) Maastricht, VIA ZUID (Talent development performing arts Limburg) and C-TAKT (Platform Transdisciplinary Talent). With Winternights they offer a stage to work-in-progress by exciting new voices in today’s performing arts.
Winternights is an adventure for both makers and visitors. The general public and professionals, such as programmers and dramaturges, can become acquainted with the new ideas and the creative process of the makers in an inspiring way. Makers are given the space to test and assess new work and to come into contact with the public, professionals and each other.”
I am delighted to have been invited back to Winternights in Maastricht this December. Winternights is difficult to describe, it is put simply, a work-in-progress festival, but in reality it is far more; Winternights is a hub of connection, reconnection and disconnection. Winternights connects artists from varying artistic disciplines, allowing them to come together on safe ground to share their work, provide feedback in line with their ethos of care and to dream together of future work, future cultural practices and future politics of the world and our communities. Winternights allows artists to reconnect with themselves by providing a playground free of judgement, deadlines or expectations. Winternights allows artists to disconnect from the banalities of reality, endless grant applications, open calls and the product-centred mindset of many instituional arts organisations; what would you make without restrictions, what processes would you engage in if you didn’t have the pressure of a premier looming over, would you rest if you allowed yourself?
I was invited to attended Winternights in 2024 with the intention of providing reflections and contemplations relating to the overall structure of the festival, with specific focus on the festivals culture of care. I look forward to returning to Winternights 2025 to cntinue the dialogues established last year, while reorienting towards the new socio-cultural problematics that have arisen since we last met in Maastricht.
Thank you to Gert-Jan Stam and everyone from the Winternights team for inviting me again!
‘Winter Nights greatest, and I would say, most revolutionary principle is its rejection of a product-focused, hyper-productive theatre culture. Many of us in creative industries struggle with the commodification of art, of making enough work, quickly enough, to make enough money to sustain ourselves, without a second thought for the sustainability of our mental, physical and creative wellbeing under such pressures. The very nature of a work-in-progress theatre festival is profoundly at odds with the status quo, and the festival serves as a much needed respite for artists as a space and time for reflection and community.’
Reflections on Winternights 2024, Lottie Wood
Home 