As part of our commitment to creating new strategies to open up our programme to a diverse audience, the Dhaka Art Summit 2018 launched a new Art Mediation programme, led by Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury. With the generous support of Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council, and in collaboration with the Hochschule Luzern, this programme was designed to engage and expose a network of local creatives and students to new methodologies of mediation, who in turn helped the local audience navigate and access the exhibitions and programmes. Aware that the space of contemporary art was, for many members of DAS’s extremely diverse audience, quite daunting, we set out to create a series of new strategies to open up our programme. These strategies strengthened our commitment to accommodate many forms of thinking and provided space for them to flourish – to create a space where different audiences were encouraged to engage with artworks on their own terms. Creating an effective mediation programme was central to this agenda and crucial in achieving DAS’s goals in the South Asia region.

This edition of DAS aimed to become completely bilingual, with all printed material presented in both Bangla and English, fostering ease of access for our Bangladeshi audience, which included the Exhibition Guide. Also included in the Guide were a series of ‘Mediation Pages’ that suggested particular tools which visitors could use to help them navigate DAS’s exhibitions. These tools were developed over the course of workshops at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (Cochin), the Hochschule Luzern (Lucerne), and in Dhaka, through dialogues between DAS’s curatorial staff, Dr. Rachel Mader and Lena Eriksson of the Hochschule Luzern, and DAS 2018’s team of 25 Art Mediators.

This dedicated team of Mediators was stationed throughout the Summit’s exhibition spaces, easily identifiable by their ASK ME ABOUT THE ART t-shirts. Trained through intensive workshops, they engaged the public in conversations around the artworks, and ran tours each day for both DAS’s general audiences and visiting school groups. You cam read a post from MoMA's education department referencing our Art Mediation and other educational initiatives here.