Yiddish Summer Weimar [ongoing]
Yiddish Summer began in 1999 as a weekend workshop. Since then, it has grown into an internationally renowned summer institute/festival for Yiddish and related cultures. Its four-fold mission is to research, transmit, create and present traditional and contemporary Yiddish and related cultures. Yiddish Summer is a creative, intergenerational and transcultural learning community that welcomes people of all backgrounds.
>> www.yiddishsummer.eu
OMAworks
OMAworks, the not-for-profit arts agency of the Other Music Academy: outstanding performing and community arts projects and culture consultants.
>> omaworks.eu
Board
Supervisory Board
Office
Live OMA
House & Garden
Children & Youth
Development
Media
Yiddish Summer; https://yiddishsummer.eu/de/
openpavillon
OMA Improv
OMAworks
Middle Eastern Music & Cultures
New Project:
OMAworks
OMA improvisation project [ongoing]
The OMA Improvisation Project is a platform for workshops, research, symposia and initiatives dedicated to improvisation in music, the other arts and in daily life. It brings together artists, thinkers, teachers, students, experts and all interested people. Its main areas of work so far include Alan Bern’s PTC© (Present-Time Composition), Conducted Improvisation, Embodiment and Communication, and Cognition. Project partners include Courant d’Arts (Strasbourg, FR) and the Exploratorium (Berlin).
>> OMA improvisation project
Altenburg by the Sea - Cultural Vessel Mary Jane
In a six-week workshop festival in Altenburg we celebrated the seas and our diversity. With schools, local organisations, neighbours and international artists we came together to learn around the themes of migration, climate change, and dreaming the city!
At the heart of the project was the old French motor sailboat "Mary Jane", which was converted into a floating cultural platform in a participatory shipyard and has since been sailing the waterways of Europe with socio-cultural programming. "Mary Jane" is part of the European network of cultural boats "Flotilla".
During the festival, a podcast, a puppet play made of garbage, a colorful sea parade, lots of messages in bottles and new networks and friendship were created ... six weeks of socio-cultural crafting in Altenburg!
More about a dreamy city Altenburg "by the sea":
www.altenburgammeer.eu
https://soundcloud.com/altenburgammeer/sets/altenburg-am-meer-in
www.instagram.com/altenburgammeer
Documentation film
#Openpavillon – meeting while building [ongoing]
#openpavillon is a sociocultural construction site located between art and artisanry. Each year we choose a new task to be carried out by a community of participants, including artists, artisans, youth with and without disabilities, exchange students, senior citizens and neighbors of the OMA. Together we learn traditional artisanal trades and use them together with artistic practices to create something together. The principle is: everybody learns!
>> www.openpavillon.eu
OMAcafé [ongoing]
The OMA Café is a combination nerve center, living room, club venue, exhibition space, meeting point and workshop space. The café is a resource for the neighborhood and for Weimar, as well as for Thuringia and for international groups and initiatives.
>> www.facebook.com/other.music.academy/
Contact: oma-events@othermusic.eu
The Other Europeans [ongoing]
The Other Europeans brings together 14 renowned artists from 8 countries to explore the common roots of klezmer- and lautari music. Supported by the EU, the project was created for the Other Music Academy together with partners in Cracow and Vienna. In addition to concerts throughout Europe and North America, the project led to a prize-winning double-CD (“Splendor”), a full-length documentary film (“The Broken Sound”), and was given the “Best Practices in Favor of the Roma Community” award by the European Commission.
>> www.theothereuropeans.eu
The Cabaret Workshop
The Other Music Academy’s Cabaret Workshop explores cabaret as a social theatrical space. Artists, handworkers and local residents come together in this project to work on fun and entertaining but also meaningful and political theater creations. The legendary Bauhaus Parties in Weimar are a major inspiration for our cabaret evenings, which are celebratory salons, dance stages, choral- and instrumental concerts, performance space and public inn all in one. Welcome and come right in!
Creative Potentials
Creative Potentials was a 1-year project financed by the Thuringia Economic Ministry. Through interviews with successful artists with highly unusual career paths, the project aimed to discover how an institutions like the OMA can help artists to develop whose needs cannot be met by standard educational institutions. The results of this project flowed into the development of the concept for the OMA.
>> DOWNLOAD paperOMA (Concept)
Open Café
In 2015 and 2016, on Sundays the OMA Café turned into a place where refugees and Weimar residents could meet and spend an afternoon together. A flexible structure made possible small workshops that were led by both refugees as well as Weimar residents. This helped to form trusting social networks and treated the refugee “crisis” as an opportunity rather than a threat.
Supported by the Local Action plan of the City of Weimar in 2015 and the Thuringia Chancellery in 2016.
>> www.facebook.com/other.music.academy
International Student Exchanges [ongoing]
Since 2012, exchange students from around the world who are in the year-long AFS Intercultural Exchanges e.V. program (www.afs.de) come to Weimar for this two-week educational project. In interdisciplinary workshops they work on a central question, all the while living and cooking together. In cooperation with the Weimar Classic Foundation (www.klassik-stiftung.de) the program integrate facets of Weimar’s rich cultural history, with workshops at historic sites and with the help of experts working in the Classic Foundation.
http://juli-im-juni.de/anthologie
OMA Middle Eastern Music & Cultures [ongoing]
As a result of the mass immigration from Syria in 2015, Germany today is the new home of many leading Syrian classical musicians. The first occurrence of this project took place in cooperation with the STÜBAPhilharmonie in November 2015. We invited four renowned Syrian musicians to the OMA to lead a workshop in Middle Eastern music. Building on the success of the first time, the project today is a platform for workshops, research and presentation of Middle Eastern music and cultures throughout the year, with a changing cast of artists and participants.
>> MAQAM music festival (Workshop)
Weimar resounds!
A sound installation and a concert created by Alan Bern on November 9, 2013. On the 65th anniversary of “Kristallnacht,” hundreds of school children, students and citizens of Weimar rang handbells next to the dozen “Stumbling Blocks” in the streets, while others opened their doors and windows and loudly played music that had been forbidden by the Nazis. At the same time, the large bells in the belltowers of Weimar’s churches, schools and government buildings rang, all to remind us not only of the tragedy of the Nazi period, but also to celebrate the cultural pluralism and freedom we enjoy today. Following the sound installation with bells small and large, a concert took place with music that had been forbidden by the Nazis.
>> weimarklingt.de
Semer Ensemble [ongoing]
Jewish artists who were forbidden by the Nazis from playing for non-Jewish audiences found some refuge in the Semer Label in Berlin. From 1932-38 the label produced hundreds of 78 rpm recordings, before it was destroyed by the Nazis on November 9, 1938. Considered lost for more than 60 years, the recordings were rediscovered in the 1990s by a record collector, Rainer Lotz, who searched for them around the world. In 2012, the Jewish Museum of Berlin commissioned Alan Bern to create a music ensemble to perform the repertoire live in concert. Following successful tours throughout Europe and North America, the ensemble published their live CD “Rescued Treasures” in 2016 on the Piranha label.
>> www.facebook.com/Semer.Reloaded/
Secondary School Students Volunteer Day [ongoing]
Jährlich kommen Weimarer Schüler*innen für einen Tag an die OMA und unterstützen uns in der Instandsetzung des Gebäudes. So wurden Hochbeete im Garten gemeinsam geplant und angelegt, das Workshopwochenende "anOTHER day" vorbereitet und zusammen verbracht und die OMA vor ihrer Heizbarkeit winterfest gemacht. Der Schülerfreiwilligentag wird von der Bürgerstiftung Weimar organisiert.
www.ehrenamt.buergerstiftung-weimar.de/schuelerfreiwilligentag/