Cities by Night Across Borders

Cities by Night Across Borders centres on Valentina Medda’s ongoing, participatory project Cities by Night, which deals with women’s perception of danger in the urban environment. The project, conceived specifically for each city, bridges the gap between arts institutions and the surrounding communities through the involvement of local women who represent a broad demographic.
Made up of Associazione Culturale Immaginare Orlando APS (Italy), ARTPOLIS (Kosovo), Rosendal International Theatre (Norway), and Valentina Medda (Italy), the partnership is creating a model for learning, research, and policy-making, with Medda’s project as the case-study. The nature of the artistic work offers a viable economic model for touring and distribution as the artistic work has different iterations: it’s an exhibition, a series of guided walks, an experiential workshop with a performative lecture, and a delegated performance making it easy to tour and adapt to any context and the needs of a presenter.
The project is environmentally responsible as only Medda travels without a set, and the work produces very minimal production waste. The partnership also honours the process of spending time and engaging with the local community to develop the artistic piece.
On top of that, a digital app, a digital archive of sorts, is being developed to help both realise the project and present its outcome. The hope is to make it possible for Cities by Night to travel alone in the future through remote supervision without the artist being present, which would make the project replicable and more sustainable.