If you are starting to read this article, it is that: You are already a YPAL, a friend has told you about the network, your day has been marked by one of our posters, you have received one of our calls for participation, seen one of our posts on social networks and/or you are intrigued by the terms YPAL, Rencontres de Reims?
First of all we wish you a warm welcome and a good read!
The purpose of this article is to introduce you to the Young Performing Arts Lovers network, and its YPAL Meetings, and to register you for the YPAL 2021 Meetings in Reims.
Contents
The YPAL network: what is it?
What is YPAL Encounters?
What’s new for the 2021 edition?
And how do I register?
The YPAL network: what is it?
Initiated in 2009 by Anne Goalard in the dynamics of the Reims Scènes d’Europe festival, the YPAL network: Young Performing Arts Lovers is a network of young Europeans united by a common interest in the performing arts.
The YPAL Network is based on the multiplicity of individual journeys and intercultural exchange common to Europe and the performing arts to create dialogue and conviviality between young people from all backgrounds.
YPAL is structured by the YPAL Encounters times, which are intended to be innovative proposals where the place of the young spectator is questioned. During these YPAL Encounters, the young spectator is not a simple target of cultural actions, he is the actor of his relationship with the performing arts.
The YPALs thus participate in the development of the YPAL Encounters, the weekend programme, the creation of workshops and the organisation of debates.
OK, but what is YPAL Encounters?
The YPALs are amateurs, artists or accompanying artists who meet every year for the YPAL Encounters in Reims (and occasionally in other European cities: Madrid in 2019, Stuttgart in 2015, Hamburg in 2010-11-12, Brussels in 2011-12, Turin, Malmo, Sarajevo …).
These are 3 days of performances, exchanges of young people from different backgrounds, reception workshops, time to meet the artists, and conviviality:
The YPALs are invited to get involved in intercultural exchanges, after attending shows together:
to confront and share their experiences as spectators, their vision of current affairs and the place of living art, to debate on the place and role of creation in our contemporary societies,- to invent new formats for encounters between spectators, artists, accompanying artists, cultural institutions and political decision-makers, to invent new types of artistic experiences.
The performance reception workshops, developed by and for the YPALs, are at the heart of the YPAL Encounters.
These meetings in Reims exist thanks to the support of the Comédie de Reims, Centre Dramatique National and are hosted within the FARaway- Festival des Arts à Reims, which brings together 7 cultural institutions in Reims;(La Comédie, La Cartonnerie, Césaré, le FRAC, le Manège, Nova Villa, l’Opéra).
51 YPALs of 9 different nationalities (France, USA, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Greece, Belgium, Ireland and Denmark), aged between 18 and 30, took part in the Rencontres 2020.
What’s new for the 2021 edition?
The 2021 edition will take place from 5 to 7 February 2021 in Reims and will breathe new life into the network and the format of the YPAL Meetings.
10 years of existence lead us to question the heart of the Rencontres YPAL.
In what way is it productive to see shows together and discuss them, whether you have a small or large audience experience, whether you have had access to a very contemporary or more academic theatre, whether you come from Poland or Italy, whether you are engaged in artistic research or are a mathematics student?
The reception workshops are the foundation of the network, the breeding ground on which participants are invited to invest and share artistic, political, social, professional, personal interests?
We wish to make the YPAL 2021 Meetings not the core of the Network’s activity but the culmination of an annual preparatory work leading to these times of exchange.
The participants draw up the programme of these Meetings and the workshops via regular Zoom meetings.
A journal dedicated to the 2021 edition will enable the work of the YPALs to be concretised and disseminated and will gather the reports, testimonies, interviews and games realised by the YPALs during this weekend.
The Rencontres de Reims can thus be an example for the organisation of other events in Europe.
And how do you register?
You now know YPAL and the Encounters! (if you read this little article correctly!)
So if you want to get involved in the YPAL network and take part in the 2021 Meetings from 5 to 7 February, register by clicking on this link:
Participation is free of charge. The Comédie de Reims will take care of the tickets for the shows, the catering, the accommodation for the non-goers and part of the travel expenses, so why hesitate?
If you have the slightest question, do not hesitate to contact us at the following address:
Félix Vannarath, YPAL 2021 Meetings Officer and Anne Goalard, President of the YPAL association