Throughout 2021 and 2022, there have been many occasions, when the project was introduced and explained to the public, as well as numerous meetings of the project’s representatives, resulting in intellectual outputs that will serve as educational tools for a broad community of theatre makers and theorists. Representatives of the project have had presentations at numerous events, e.g. Nick Hunt at at the event Harnessing a 21st Century approach to Performing Arts: Technology, Practice, Education and Research, at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, at the EVA London 2022 conference (Electronic Visualisation in the Arts), and at the Shifting Centres (in the middle of nowhere), Scenography Working Group, IFTR 2022 in Reykjavík; Chris Van Goethem at the Prague Quadrennial Symposium in Prague in 2022 or Umberto di Nino at the 2022 Tbilisi Biennale Stage Design Symposium.
Regarding the meetings that took place in 2022, they served not only to formulate the vision of the project, its aims, outputs and knowledge, but also to prepare and start the work with students on the extensive research project of historical cultural heritage. The first one was in Madrid in February. The Madrid teacher workshop focused on the relation between architects, scenographers and technicians and the way technology is "travelling" in time and space. This meeting laid foundations for further exploration of the interdisciplinary approach and helped formulate the tasks for the students to come.
The first in-person meeting of the teachers and the students was in Stockholm. The first student workshop focused on the relation between historic and contemporary technology and alternative methods of documenting technical facts. Visits in Drottninghalm and Confidencen theatres were an introduction to baroque machinery and technical methods of theatre making, while the Royal Opera and Dramaten presented the modern techniques of VR as the current trend and a newly emerging tool for play productions and scenography. This real-life experience helped shape the historical continuum of theatre practice in a way that the students could start their own mapping of the historical milestones in stage operations.
Next meeting was The Herritage Café in Bruges. It was organised in conjunction with the STEPP heritage days. The purpose of a Heritage Café is to increase awareness of the importance of the theatre technical heritage in the wider sector, to motivate teaching staff to implement the developed materials in their curricula, and to widen the network with other interested parties. This project was open to the academic staff in the field of scenography, architecture, stage design etc.
PQ contributes to the project with PR activities, networking and a podcast series of interviews with the CANON international team members. Each episode is an introduction of a certain artistic area, which is the closest to the particular person. These interviews were recorded in person, partly in Stockholm, Madrid and Rome, and are a refreshing listen for everyone interested in various creative approaches, technical works, historical fun facts and how theatre technology is operated, maintained and used in different countries.
