As all good things come to an end, SAMA Paris adventure also. After the closing of 13 Art Fair and five intense days in the French capital, our crew took a pumpkin coach back to Amsterdam on the 16th of October.
Although, it didn’t mean that work was done at all; a lot of things were waiting for us to continue. Our Mexican genie Moste stayed in the Netherlands for three more weeks in order to help Anna with some planned events, like the Keith Haring kids’ workshop organised at the Stedelijk Museum, or the painting session at QRU’s, or the Amsterdam 750th "Imaginary" Birthday.
We had to debrief our trip and use it as a support to develop new long-term projects. Some good surprises happened, for example friends from L’Art Seine already coming at us to visit, contacts post fair getting in touch to collaborate, new human connexions and new original ideas bursting in our brains and in our everyday life. As a matter of fact, we had to make some gathering again, assemble people, strengths, reflections, to build a solid future map.
Some afternoon that I was at SAMA HQ with Moste and Titi, Anna was cooking a flavoured spicy squash soup when I started to try drawing some big red threads regarding the next months moves. Full of hope and of tasty aroma, I threw a first-main-leading-essential question at our founder: if a good fairy would fulfil one wish of her and if she could ask and get magically anything for the foundation right now, what would it be? She didn’t hesitate much before answering: “A team, a real permanent team”.
Indeed, a tough creative official crew was needed, with one person filling each role, we could progress faster; that is our next year first goal. Ideally, it would be composed by the Founder and Managing Director (Anna), an Art Director (Moste), a Writer (myself), a Project Manager, and a few interns to support digital development and activities.
On a more theoretical basis, SAMA still stands for three principal axis, that we wish to follow and nurture. On the behalf of them, SAMA is seriously scheduling a wide range of direct actions:
Heritage
Inner business development through official registrations (through Adlib first then through new entities), merchandising and branding (among others, the project of launching a selling/informative point in the city, or of building a real ads campaign)
Culture
Education spreading (for example, working closely with Brettenzonen Happenings for Slotermeer area schools program).
Foundation’s promotion (to do so, we notably wish to create a regular newsletter, to publish a book, to present an official catalogue, to produce mini video documentaries, to edit weekly online articles, enforce social media presence), public relationships (we are now getting in touch with zines and personalities to speak about us) and fundraising (contact with local or international, public or private infrastructures to find investors).
Strengthen our museum tours and activities on private or public basis (for example, partnerships with tourism structures and agencies like the Teleport Hotel).
Emancipation
Street Art production to expand our current collection (at the moment we are targeting four walls to invest with new murals) or to participate in city embellishment (like the projects of Schiphol airport wall and Sloterdijk arches painting).
Mutiplying events in and out SAMA; for the following months, SAMA agenda is already showing tight busy days (“From Panama to Dam” exhibition from April to September 2018 at our gallery about our participation in 13artfair, 24HNW exposition, 4en5mei committee “Geef mij maar Amsterdam” happening, or “Back into the Future” exhibition from September to December 2018 at our gallery also, to demonstrate VR/AR technology impact on heritage evolution).
Yeah, that seems like a lot… However this is only a small part of all the plans already drafted for the next years… We will need every gentle hand, friendly help, accurate comments, useful connections from everybody, lucky encounters, public servants, gifted artists, reliable volunteers, web actors, various specialists, press protagonists… and even maybe from you dear reader.
2017 is about to end, but the coming year already appears around the horizon, making us more creative and tougher, craving and more confident, more organised and stronger, precise about our needs and urges. 2018 will provide new keys to open a bit more the door on Artivism as SAMA is finding its way as a tool to enter social dialogues.
So, let’s spread the word!
