Interview with Dr. Jana Binder - Director of the Goethe-Institut - Lisbon + date changes for April and May events

Edited by Richard Lucas

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This free newsletter has information about community events in Lisbon, plus guest posts, interviews. We now have 1657 subscribers. If you want to help with the project or contribute content, please contact me. If you want to reach my audience with an announcement about a project of interest to them. Please get in touch.

Greetings all

The date of Open Coffee Lisbon is moved to Wed 26th April at 0930 as the last Tuesday of this month is 25th April, the date of Portugal's famous Carnation Revolution and many people will be taking the day off to celebrate Portugal’s wonderful move from dictatorship to freedom.

Details here Your host will be Olga, Many thanks to her and the amazing team of volunteers. Note the later start time of 9:30 AM @ Startup Lisboa Rua da Prata 80 Lisboa. Everyone at Open Coffee gets a minute to say who they are, what they do, what they want and how they can help other people at the gathering. It’s for everyone who is looking to make positive changes in their own lives and those of others.

The date of Lisbon Newcomers Welcome Club has been move to 9th May @ Titanic at 18:00. hosted by Gui Sancho. Full details here https://www.meetup.com/lisbon-newcomers-welcome-group/events/2925586 also due to 25th May celebrations.

Other diary dates

April 24th Cervejaria do Bairro 20:00 Improv comedy show with Queen Queerlysh and her Funny Followers

****************************************************************************************************About Open Coffee Lisbon
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About Open Coffee
Everyone at Open Coffee gets a minute to say 1. who they are, 2. what they do, 3. What they are looking for, and 4. how they can help other people. After everyone has introduced themselves, the rest of the event is free form networking. Free, fun, and useful, it is popular for those who are looking for clients, investors, co founders, employees, a job or just inspiration. Start the day with positive, high energy people who can be bothered to be up for an early start. We are getting another Open Coffee group going in Ericeira in May. Contact Richard or Olga for more information. If you want to get a group going in your city, or university, or to help with an existing event, get in touch here https://forms.gle/hjQUMyFap5K8yo8y9. We will do our best to help you get up and running.

Lisbon Newcomers Welcome Club
We start on time, and have to be out by about 20:30 so don’t be late. This "Lisbon Newcomers Welcome Club" gathering is for people who are new to Lisbon or want to welcome them, and increase their number of connections. The first meetup was held November 2021 and since we have welcomed 1250+ people to these events. Each event creates new bonds between newcomers to Lisbon and those who have been here for a while in a simple, fun, yet effective way. Thanks to the fabulous team at Titanic. Many thanks to the team at Titanic for the venue and support. Our events are open and welcoming to people from all backgrounds. You will be surprised to see how many different nationalities come together at these events. We have a structured first sixty minutes with icebreakers aimed at making things easy for introverts and for people to connect with one another. Then participants are welcome to hang out and socialise as they wish after this part of the meeting is over.

Free Community Announcements If you have a community initiative you want to share or announce, let us know in advance.

This is not a speed dating/pickup type event. Everyone who attends is entitled to feel safe, not be harassed or pressured. We introduced enhanced measures to address this issue following some complaints. There are plenty of other events in town with no hosting and/or code of conduct so go there if this doesn’t suit you.

Guest Interview with Dr. Jana Binder - Director of the Goethe-Institut -  Lisbon

Richard: Please introduce yourself

Dr. Jana Binder: I am a trained cultural anthropologist and find it fascinating to learn about other points of view, ways of life and perspectives. I started working for the Goethe-Institut 16 years ago. This takes me to a different place every 5 years, so I always have the chance to get to know new perspectives, languages, social contexts and different collective memories of historical events. I find that personally very enriching.

Richard: How you came to be running this organisation here in Lisbon

Dr. Jana Binder: After professional stations in Greece, Brazil, Slovakia and Germany, I have now landed in Portugal. This is a kind of "homecoming", as I already lived here with my family for 5 years in the 80s. Of course, it was a very different country back then, but it is always a great advantage to understand a country if you understand its language. It makes everything much easier and you integrate faster. 

Richard: Please describe the main roles of the Institute 

Dr. Jana Binder: The Goethe-Institut is an association that was founded in Germany after the Second World War to ensure that there are close connections and personal cooperation between people with different backgrounds but the same interests and ideas all over the world, in order to promote a lively exchange of civil society outside the official political government positions between countries. In Portugal, this association has been active for over 60 years. At that time, we were in a dictatorship here, free expression of opinion was not possible, neither were experimental, new thoughts and cultural forms. At that time, the Goethe-Institut was a small extraterritorial place in Portugal where there was no censorship and where you could hear and say things that you were otherwise not allowed to say. We still have this role in many places in the world (and unfortunately there are currently more rather than fewer) but in Portugal it is fortunately no longer our main task. But we are still a place where you can experience new things, develop yourself, learn and study, meet people who are involved in the most diverse things and who have very different backgrounds. Today we see ourselves as a platform, a place where people with ideas can create something. 

Richard: You mentioned that you need to overcome stereotypes and preconceptions that the Institute is “German only” and very official. How do you do that?

Dr. Jana Binder: The fact that we as an association were the name of an old German poet for more than 70 years, that we receive a large part of our budget from the German Foreign Ministry and that, among other things, we offer German Language Courses, many people think that, the house is exclusively for our students, or Germans. But we have a Café, that is happy to serve anyone, especially in our beautiful garden in summer, we have a library, that serves for many people as a free studying space or co-working space and we invite all kind of initiatives and artists to make use of the space - from recording their albums in the auditorium or using it for dance- oder piano practice to public cinema screenings and talks or invite initiatives of all kind to have their internal meetings, or ideation or design thinking in one of our 10 classrooms.   

Richard: How do you make your plans and choose the topics, activities and projects that you are going to run or support. Does there have to be a ‘German’ connection?

Dr. Jana Binder: Our business model is based on renting out the space approx. 40% of the time for private / commercial / closed events. In the rest of the time: 30% of the time we handing it to initiatives that are dear to us and where we together find a form of financing the event and the extra costs that we might have with security, cleaning, energy etc. and the other 30% we are programming together with partners and sponsors. THese are events around the subjects that are important to us: sustainability/climate change, racism/postcolonialism, queer-identities/feminism. As we are a cultural institution we tend to address these issues via cultural expressions like performances, children's books, film, etc.

There is not always a “German connection” in the way that there needs to be a German artist involved. We also had concerts of the Afghan National Orchestra or are hosting the events of the collectives “O Lado negro da forca” or the “Women working in film”. Here it is more about the values that we see as a connection to what we as a German association founded after the Second World War stand for.  

Richard: The desire to engage with the local community was very clear from your introduction. Why is this a priority? 

Dr. Jana Binder: A lot of countries have a cultural foreign diplomacy that is focused on “nation branding” of a national cultural industry. Sometimes they export stuff that nobody really wants or understands or needs. What we offer instead, is to listen to the local (arts) communities in the countries that we act in and ask “what is your problem”? And most of the time there is a similar problem in Germany so we connect these people and they can exchange their strategies. And this is how you develop long lasting relationships, that in the further ado do not need us anymore.  

Richard: How much flexibility do you have to support new projects and initiatives, and how far are projects planned a long time in advance,

Dr. Jana Binder: I would say,  that we have a dedicated team, that is as flexible as possible to make things happen - of course we have laws and working hours and and other conditions that are setting the frame, but we are also curious and imaginative. The more an initiative is self-organised and needs us only to open the doors, the more flexible we are. If there is a lot of preparation from our side involved: setting the space, organising licences, technical support, communication, the more time we need. Depending a little bit on the period of year we are in, we need notice 3-4 month in advance to be safe. We do appreciate a series of things, so that they can be developed together and the organizers are becoming more and more part of our team and know they way around the house.  

Richard: Your Linkedin profile talks about your experience in and commitment to digitization for cultural institutions. Can you elaborate on this a bit, what it means and why it is important to you and the wider community?

Dr. Jana Binder: Next to open the house to the communities around us, I would like to bring the digital community of Lisbon and the artistic community closer together. I worked a lot about digital transformation - and I see that cultural institution will have an important role in that, in preparing the societies for the discourses that we need around what kind of techno-society we want to live in, but therefore they need to know what these new technological developments are about - and of what use they might be as well. So I am working on a project to start an “digital innovation laboratory for the arts” - where artists can get in touch with new technologies and their “makers” and vice versa as I have seen, that this is a very fruitful connection for both sides. In Portugal you have both communities very well developed but not very well connected. I am looking for partners and connections who will want to change this. 

Richard: Anything I didn’t ask you would like to share

Dr. Jana Binder: Just get in touch via our www.goethe.de/portugal, Facebook, Insta, Linkedin, Twitter! We are looking forward to your ideas and the connections you could make.