Many institutional parameters may change when alkantara, after 14 years of inhabiting numerous sites in the city with its bi-annual festival and various other programmes and projects, moves into a building. Will the profile or orientation of alkantara change? Is it a moment to reflect on its role and function in the performing arts scene in Lisbon, Portugal and in a wider international context? Or to rethink its mission? Should its organisational structure change? Who will be its future audience? And so on.

After researching alkantara's present and past, the participants of It Will Be What We Make It (IWBWWMI) embarked on a futurist fiction, a kind of collective hallucination or brainstorming on what alkantara in its new space could become. The first scenario sees the new space of Alkantara as a venue:

The middle room downstairs functions as a bar and where the audience can get information regarding the activities of alkantara and other cultural events. It is also the meeting point for the audience before and after the performances. (...) This space is articulated enough to accommodate different artistic manifestations and other social events like lectures, presentations, parties, discussions. This is a small scale venue (8 rows with 16 seats each) that responded to a need from 2007 regarding smaller venues for performing arts.

The programme maintains and develops the ideas that were behind the “2008 year of intercultural dialogue”. (...) the space became a truly important milestone in relation to the Lusophone* community in Lisbon, and also an important place for intercultural relations between Europe and Lusophone countries.

(*A Lusophone is someone who speaks the Portuguese language natively or by adoption)

In the second scenario alkantara is no longer an institution in the traditional sense, it has no fixed programme, no permanent organization. Instead it is based on temporary projects.

December 2007-December 2008 by theme/topic: “future”

The participants of IWBWWMI were invited to stay for another year to organize a platform on the topic “future”.

Projects: - seminar on futurology with Jim Dator, Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Director of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies + a group of scientists, businessmen and venture-capitalists, fashion-designers, politicians - science-fiction writers workshop - projects for 2019 (art that will made and presented then) - working group on the future of theater - political activism in Portugal – how they envisage futures - workshop in emerging technologies - future energy – installation of solar cells and hydrogen fuel cells in Alkantara

Space: - installation of solar cells on the roof and hydrogen fuel cells in the basement that was built under the entrance - the year of renovation

The third scenario alkantara as an organisation doesn't exist any more, their building became an exchange platform:

In Lisbon in the early 90s there were no places and venues to show dance and performing art. In the year 2007, the need for a venue was already fulfilled by Culturgest, CCB, etc and alkantara decided to corresponded to the need for a space to think about work and produce discourse.

Therefore there was a decision made to create a place that has certain autonomy from the governing structures. A place that is connected to peer organizations from Lisbon that are in need of an exchange platform but don’t have it in their own facilities. A platform that is not dedicated to production but is rather a breeding ground.

Some of the activities of the platform are: Department for Cultural Policy – communicates ideas and proposal of the people related to the platform to the city authorities and further. Department for Re-enactment - research about not visible work and old Portuguese performances that are not documented. Tribunal – in this idea of producing discourse the artists can subject themselves to be judged by a group of people, that they would chose.