The third ALMOSTREAL getogether took place in Lisbon 13 June 2006. This one-day gathering of ALMOSTREAL advisors and ALMOSTREAL team was held to reflect and discuss the practical and conceptual structure of ALMOSTREAL and also to consider the future development of stage 3 in Lisbon involving a cross-disciplinary workshop that draws new links between between practice and theory.

Some of the main issues and 'evaluation' points that emerged were:

Communications

The ambiguity of AR, or the inability to explain succinctly the project leaves the project underappreciated both within the foundation and outside. Moreover, the projects ambiguity has become an obstacle that hinders real trust-based engagement. How can you develop trust with someone or something when you can not recognise with whom you are speaking? For AR to become more credible and acknowledged, it needs to be better communicated (even if it means resorting to more surface representations, such as for example a “communications” or “public relations” package) and to describe loosely what it is doing and what it aims to do.

ALMOSTREAL as a practice-based example of intercultural collaboration

The notion of AR becoming a practice-based (rather than a preacher) instance of ‘intercultural’ collaboration — as a funding system which opens a new perspective between the institution and independent cultural figures that did not exist previously. In this sense, AR is a means to research the possibility of interculturality between the different practices of artistic marginalities and also between the hegemony of the cultural insitution and alternative forms of culture. As a project AR should probe the desire to collect and share knowledge which can enable both the cultural institution and independent cultural figures to learn from each other.

Open evaluation

Rather than being a funding scheme that evaluates according to a pre-emptive criteria, ALMOSTREAL should develop an open evaluation, open to suggestions during the artistic process. Moreover, ALMOSTREAL's evaluation should not be limited to the the art itself, but look more closely into the possible influences of practice on the funding process and political discourse. This processual, and responsive evaluation should be ALMOSTREAL’s ‘tangible result’. In doing so, ALMOSTREAL is at the same time researching and opening other yet hitherto unknown possibilities for supporting artistic collaborations.