On April 15th and 16th all the partners were supposed to meet each other in Tallin but due to the COVID-19 emergency the meeting has been organized online. They had two interesting day talking about each country situation, the progress of the project and possible developments of it.
On the second day new partners from Spain, Czech Republic and Hungary joined Sparse team to know more about the project and share thoughts, ideas and activities that focus on enhancing and supporting rural community cultural life.
Here are short descriptions of the first rural tour in each country.

Romania. Shoshin toured in October and November 2019 in 5 villages. They had children shows from 2 theatre companies and offered them to the schools in the villages for free. The children really enjoyed the shows as they were different to ones that have been to the schools before from the state theatres. They had 375 people attend in total with between 60 -70 children per show. The actors enjoyed the tours and commented that it was good that all the arrangements were made for them and they only had to concentrate on the performance.

Estonia. Eesti Tantsuagentuur planned 27 performances of 4 productions, 21 performances of 3 productions actually toured with an average audience of 53 per performance. They have had to cancel the final 6 performances which were planned in schools due to the current situation. The artists understood the concept of rural touring really well and produced some very good work. Some promoters were very good and used other events to help promote the shows.

Italy. AMAT. The tour was a good experience; it was in 5 small villages that all had been damaged after the earthquake in 2016. They all worked really well, the artists were happy and have been talking positively about the experience, AMAT have been receiving new proposals from other artists who want to be involved in future tours. Had good audience figures for all of the shows, local promoters created a good atmosphere and context for the shows.

Lithuania. Fish Eye had good experiences. 8 performances in November and December in 5 villages, had an audience of around 700 in total. The promoters also linked the performances to another event and made the tickets free. They have already received the funding for the next round of tours. They are having regular meetings with the promoters via zoom and are starting to plan the tours for the autumn, hope to have it all finalized by 1st June.