The ICAF is the main festival in the world dedicated to community arts. Headquartered in Rotterdam (Netherlands), it highlights its international projection, giving visibility to projects from all around the world. The ICAF offers the opportunity to see artistic proposals that we rarely have the opportunity to know outside their local contexts.
For some years now, ICAF has experienced a period of growth and progress. In 2016, the I Summer School was convened for professionals and people at the beginning of their careers in community arts. It offered the opportunity to work with artists and community arts creators from wide-ranging backgrounds, emphasizing how we can transfer community creation practices outside their contexts.
In 2018, the second edition of the School took place in Barcelona, co-organized by comuArt. For the first time the ICAF leaves its national borders and establishes a co-production. Within the framework of the Grec Festival in Barcelona, the Beckett Room hosted three modules for a week: Línea de Sombra Theatre (Mexico) and Forklilft Danceworks (United States) applied their work methodologies to the local context of Barcelona, which created a mini experience of community creation with the neighbourhood of Raval and the workers of the cleaning company, Urbaser. The prestigious academic, Sheila Preston (United Kingdom) facilitated the third module, where long-distance community creation professionals had a space to look at their practice as facilitators, sharing questions, contrasts, and experiences of their own artistic projects.
The program was tied up with a week of encounters and evening activities that allowed participants to explore local projects, to approach community arts organisations and events, and to watch the ICAF documentaries: Trash Dance and, ICAF’s last edition.