4. Positive surprises and unexpected benefits during the project’s realization

These are the main areas and examples of what the interviewees answered:

People

• The main positive surprise was the people: there were extraordinary people involved in the project: professionals and artists: inspired, motivated, enthusiastic and engaged.
• Setting up new friendship and changing personal lives as a result of established contacts during the project.

Project’s concept, Artistic content and production

• The project was excellent in taking care of artistic production. Intercult is good in finding “cutting edge” and pieces of interesting artistic works, and presenting them in unusual spaces. It is a good example of connecting infrastructure with artistic process.
• The project was a good combination of cooperation, production, presentation and hosting, as well as making long-lasting connections. In this respect it is unique among many other cross-border projects across Europe.
• Crossing borders between artistic disciplines, including between art and science.
• Positive experience to attend artistic productions which otherwise you wouldn’t be possible to attend.
• Collaborating with new colleagues and creating an artistic piece together.

Audiences and communities

• Active involvement of young people.
• Open audiences, curious to experiment and be engaged.
• Reaching new audiences who wouldn’t normally go to a conventional theatre production.
• Spreading artistic happenings across a city and being nearer to the communities and daily life.

Organisation and management

• Organizational development and capacity building: the project helped for learning and gaining experiences.
• The project required a lot of adaptability and flexibility which was a learning process and developed new skills.
• Capability to manage with the whole project despite of the complexity and the pressure.
• Understanding the importance of all levels when managing a project: local, national and international.
• Organizers, local hosts, artists: everyone showed ability to work under a lot of stress.
• Understanding that part of the learning curve in the professional life in the arts is to understand cultural differences.
• Local organizers and hosts embraced the project and made it work.