What's happening in FiraTàrrega?

Tàrrega, 3^rd February 2022. FiraTàrrega continues with the activities in its calendar. After the presentation of Territori Creatiu, comes another event focussed mainly on the field of professional meetings. On the 3^rd of February, the first Creative Lab will be held. This is aa 90-minute digital meeting, conducted by the team from FiraTàrrega and facilitated by delegates of the offices of Catalan Arts (ICEC). In this meeting, new projects by 4 companies for the public space will be presented. These are Manolo Alcántara with his project Maña, Laia Santanach with Tradere, Pol Jiménez with Lo Faunal and Roger Bernat / FFF with Procés reconstituent. The companies invited by FiraTàrrega will present their new projects aimed at the foreign market to 30 international promotors from 11 countries, selected by FiraTàrrega and Catalan Arts. Moreover, the companies will be accompanied at all times by programmers complicit in their work, who know the productions well and have collaborated with them.

In the framework of the hybrid professional meeting (in person and digital), and with the collaboration of Catalan Arts, FiraTàrrega deploys this new model of small-scale online activity in which invited international promotors will get to know Catalan companies. Mike Ribalta, head of the Professionals' Area at FiraTàrrega, highlights the opportunity that holding meetings of this type represents: "the digital universe is an excellent place for professional meetings because it enables very accessible connections and without frontiers". The aim of the meeting is to "put creators in contact with their potential programmer, to help the new creations find markets and extend the artists' network of contacts". For her part, Mar Pérez Unanue, acting director of the Markets Area of the Catalan Institute of Cultural Companies (ICEC), emphasises the collaboration with FiraTàrrega which is based "on mutual understanding and a shared love for the sector of the street arts". She also highlights that the Creative Lab is a step forward which, over the year, will suppose meetings in the sector at festivals and various events in the preforming arts and that the opportunity must be taken "to be in contact, to share and to connect international colleagues and a good selection of projects".

The structure of the meeting is designed to enable the participants to share knowledge, learn about the situation in different countries, connect actively and discover new creations, through formal and informal meeting places. These meetings take the name of "Creative Labs" and it is planned to hold two per year.

The meeting is a joint initiative of FiraTàrrega and Catalan Arts (ICEC) to fulfil the mission of the two entities. For La Fira, this means organising meetings between professionals in the sector to let them know about new creations and facilitate their arrival on the market. Catalan Arts, the brand of the ICEC for exporting and internationalising Catalan cultural and creative companies, is working on several lines of action to connect, assess and help the creative businesses and improve their position on the national and international markets, as well as informing international agents about the context of these and the key professionals in Catalonia through the ICEC offices in Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, London and Paris.