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Deze masterproef beschrijft de manier waarop musea, en de samenleving zelf, een soort mentaliteitsverandering doormaken. Musea moeten vandaag de dag hun maatschappelijke verantwoordelijkheid bewijzen. Collectiegedreven institutioneel model maakt plaats voor een meer waardegedreven sociaal en activistisch model. Dit onderzoek is relevant omdat je een verschuiving ziet in de museumpraktijk wereldwijd. Een voorbeeld is de universele discussie over de huidige museale definitie van ICOM, die in dit proefschrift is opgenomen. Door verschillende mentaliteitsveranderingen en complexe uitdagingen zoals de nood aan diversiteit en participatie en de manier waarop de Vlaamse overheid hiermee omgaat, moeten musea zichzelf voortdurend uitdagen en de traditionele museumpraktijk heruitvinden. Het feit dat het museum een afspiegeling moet zijn van de samenleving waarin het leeft, maakt dat ze zichzelf moeten uitdagen en de manier waarop de museumpraktijk wordt uitgevoerd opnieuw moeten uitvinden. Een museum kan een instelling zijn die de macht heeft om verschillende soorten onrecht en ongelijkheid aan de kaak te stellen, en daarom moet de museumpraktijk in een actieve positie worden geplaatst om te werken aan een inclusieve samenleving. Een museum moet transformeren van reflectie naar actie. De essentie van deze masterproef bevat een literatuurstudie en een casestudy op basis van de jaarverslagen van 3 Vlaamse musea. In het voorwoord is het werk van Sacco over Cultuur 3.0 opgenomen, waaruit het belang van cultuurparticipatie blijkt. Dit onderzoek probeert de kenmerken van een activistisch museum te verduidelijken en neigt naar een vergelijking met het Vlaamse museumlandschap en het Vlaams beleid. Om deze vraag te beantwoorden is dit onderzoek gebaseerd op het theoretisch kader van wat het activistische museum zou moeten zijn. Het lijkt erop dat de vraagstelling zeer complex en besluiteloos is, omdat activisme een term is die vooral in de museumpraktijk voor interpretatie vatbaar is. De stelling kan daarom concluderen dat er nog steeds een zekere terughoudendheid bestaat ten aanzien van het gebruik van het woord activisme. Ook kan geconcludeerd worden dat activisme vaak geworteld is in de methodologie van participatieve praktijken.

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In western societies, people of colour have traditionally been negatively depicted and stereotyped by the entertainment and arts complex. People of colour are often used as tokens in order to get more minority groups into a plot of a film or series. In this way, producers avoid criticism from minority groups. Nevertheless, the use of stereotypes and tokenism has a strong influence on viewers’ behaviour and relationships with people from their ingroup as well as their outgroup. People often interpret what they see through popular media as true to life. As a consequence, non-representative, negative portrayals of people of colour could lead to an impediment for ethnic harmony and equal opportunity. Therefore, the television industry as well as the fast-emerging streaming services should avoid stereotypes that do not represent people of colour in an adequate way. A well-known token in the television industry is the trope of the gay best friend (GBF). The stereotypical portrayal of effeminate gay men has traditionally been used to perpetuate heterosexual standards. The next trend of the gay best friend now seems to be the Black best friend (BBF). The Black best friend is a character with no or limited autonomy who serves as a tool in order to make a film or show appear more diverse and inclusive. Nevertheless, in the HBO series Euphoria and the British Netflix show Sex Education, Black characters are not presented as inferior to their white counterparts. These characters break with traditional stereotypes of Black women and men and are at least as relevant as the white lead characters. This master’s thesis will examine how contemporary teen series challenge the traditional Black best friend trope. In the first part of this master’s thesis, I will focus on the importance of the representation of people of colour. In doing so, I will discuss existing tropes which hinder adequate depictions of coloured characters. Moreover, a theoretical frame will be provided by the literature of Vincent Colonna and Jason Mittell, who conceptualised different types of TV characters. The goal of this section is to make a distinction between relevant and less relevant characters. The second part of this thesis consists of three case studies, which examine the role of Black characters in teen drama and the relationship to their white counterpart. Throughout this work, the word ‘Black’ will be capitalised, since it is considered a gesture that “opposes practices that routinely disrespected Black people through the power to name” (Collins, 2016, p. 137).

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Deze masterthesis onderzoekt het repertoiredebat binnen het Vlaamse theaterlandschap. Het belangrijkste doel is om te bepalen wat men bedoelt als men spreekt over het repertoiredebat. Daarnaast wil deze thesis de verschillende aspecten van het zogenaamde repertoiredebat in de Vlaamse podiumkunsten onderzoeken. Het repertoiredebat is een complex fenomeen en heeft alles te maken met de organisatie van het Vlaamse theaterlandschap. Binnen dat landschap is er een verdeeldheid over de organisatie. Die verdeeldheid leidde in 2008 tot een publiek debat tussen voor- en tegenstanders van repertoiretheater. Vanaf dat moment zijn er talloze debatten geweest. Zowel in de media als in de theaterwereld. Maar het debat sorteerde weinig effect. De laatste jaren is er echter een hernieuwde focus op repertoiretheater. Tegenwoordig proberen verschillende theatermakers en gezelschappen nieuwe manieren te bedenken om zichzelf te organiseren en om repertoiretheater terug op de planken te brengen. Om dit te bereiken, bedenken ze allerlei originele manieren om met repertoire om te gaan. Dit onderzoek bespreekt vier casestudies van voorstellingen waar theatergezelschappen hun stempel drukten op repertoirestukken. Bij de gekozen casestudies kijkt dit onderzoek naar herwerkingen van repertoirestukken van: Sophocles, Shakespeare en Tsjechov. Op basis van het literatuuronderzoek en de interviews stelt dit onderzoek vast dat het repertoiredebat over het algemeen te eenzijdig wordt bekeken en dat het debat complexer is dan de stelling: "Is het nog relevant om repertoiretheater te spelen?" Kortom, dit onderzoek ziet in dat het zinvol is om de grijze zone die verder gaat dan de uitspraak 'Repertoire versus geen repertoire' verder te onderzoeken.

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This thesis is the result of an internship at project De FactorY. De FactorY is a social artistic studio in Leuven for people who have difficulty accessing the regular art circuit. The project does not have the right resources to offer enough exhibition options to its participants. That is why this research poses the following question: How can De FactorY support its participants in the process towards exhibiting outside De FactorY as an organization? The goal of this research is to get to know the needs of the participants of De FactorY in terms of exhibiting their own work. When these needs are documented, the study goes on to investigate how De FactorY can play a role in realizing those needs. Finally, the study offers recommendations to De FactorY on how to cater to the participants needs. These recommendations can serve as a source of inspiration for similar organizations. To answer the research question, the study starts with an extensive literature study to initiate and support the practical research. The second part of this thesis gathers the necessary information about De FactorY as a project and what they already have to offer. Through interviews with the participants, it becomes clear what experiences are available in De FactorY and what is still lacking. The information provided by the participants is a formal source of the research. Lastly Greet Verbruggen of Expo Leuven gives insights to substantiate the recommendations for De FactorY. There are several reasons why participants of De FactorY may want to exhibit their own art. One of the motives could be the sale of their works, but that is often only a minor issue. The majority of participants attaches more value to the intrinsic consequences of exhibiting. This includes the positive influence on the maker's self-image and self-development, being able to express their own emotions and thoughts, conveying a message, and learn about the structure of exhibitions and making contacts. These potential positive consequences show that exhibiting their own art could bring sufficient satisfaction to the participants. The interviews with the participants demonstrate that they need support in showing their works outside of De FactorY itself. De FactorY can support its participants by organizing workshops that educate them about exhibiting, assisting them in creating and developing a portfolio, offering a map of exhibition spaces, establishing contacts with exhibition spaces, introducing them to offer their artworks online and finally help participants to familiarize themselves with the sale of their art.

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This thesis wishes to debunk three conceptions of improvisation that have been proven to be inaccurate and unhelpful, but that still somehow are lurking behind our ideas of what it is, what it means, to improvise. In a split position between the field of contemporary dance and the side of theorising it, I draw from my experience and jump back and forth towards nineteenth and twentieth century French philosophy, so to try and reduce the timely lag between theory and what happens in today’s practice. The theoretical foundation of what practitioners have written on improvisation are phenomenological, and so is mine, but the lack of new theorising on movements scores deserves a textual update. In the discrepancy between lived experience and academic theory, I question the conceptions that reign our thinking of improvisation, or better, that reign our thinking of improvisation as non-thinking, easy, and running from habit. In more words, I lend the following ideas some debunk-attention: 1 - improvisation as purely a body taking over, through cancelling the mind 2 - improvisation as not needing any training, since the ease of the natural body will do 3 - improvisation as in need of an ever-going avoidance of habit Firstly, I put some counterweight to the idea that movement needs to leave the realm of thinking in order to be free and utterly creative. Finding the new is too often equalled to silencing the mind and letting the body go, whereas many scores in the current field of contemporary dance, in contrast, build upon the mind and its capacity to think in finding the new. I argue that such leap towards the intellect might help us to linger in the unknown, and in doing so, I turn towards the movement scores of joint isolation and careful scientist by Thomas Hauert and perfect movement by Salva Sanchis. I propose that the encounter with a score induces a moment of hesitation, as appears in the work of Henri Bergson, to think of how the new might appear and how the mind might be involved. For this, the distinction of mind and body is to be stretched out, smeared out, to find the in-between: how to think and move? Secondly, I wonder why we struggle, why we repeat. In debunking the conception that improvisation is something easy, I look at the encounter with a score, rethinking it through what Deleuze wrote on the concept of Problem. The score entails an open search, with an uncertain outcome, and building upon the pedagogical approach, I suggest that a struggle might arise: a claim I unpack through a semiotic analysis of the encounter. In wondering why one would repeat it then, I again turn to Deleuze and his Difference and Repetition. Thirdly, I look at the bad reputation of habit and the paradox it implies. The idea reigns that improvisation needs to avoid habit but ain’t it, at the same time, installing new ones? I consider how, through the work of Ravaisson, habit acquisition and scores have more in common than seems at first, to then move to the ever-present idea that habit is to be moved beyond within dance improvisation. I propose bracketing habit is a matter of finding the layer of habit that has become an obstacle, rather than bracketing it all. Improvisation is then about noticing the difference; strongly resonating with how Sanchis looks at technique. To conclude, I rethink the value of habit, not solely seeing it as an obstacle. Because in fact, habit might be saving energy, and might be saving us.