The Vaccine – Who should get it first?

This programme is part of the festival Forum on European Culture, 17 – 20 September in Amsterdam.

The Vaccine starts with the idea that there is a working vaccine for Covid-19. However there is not enough for everybody. Who should get it first?

This summer, a selection of 9 Dutch residents – diverse in age, profession and place of residency – try to reach consensus via a series of digital meetings. What do their arguments say about solidarity and personal freedom? Can we decide at all about a priority when we speak about human lives? A short film of this social experiment will premiere at the Forum on European Culture Festival. Afterwards we will enter into conversation with Arpad Schilling, who developed the experiment, and Ira Helsloot, Professor of the politics of safety and security at the Radbout Universiteit Nijmegen.

During the COVID-lockdown, people all over the world needed to follow strict regulations, and were deprived of making decisions on their own life. The Vaccine, an experiment that is having its world premiere with Dutch participants, observes how normal citizens experience the pandemic and what they would do if they had decision-making power.

Árpád Schilling uses theatre tools and dramaturgy as a means to bring different perspectives into debate and conversation. His organization, Krétakör has made a determined shift from theatre as a stage-based experience to theatre as a social forum, and between 2008-2016 they worked on several international projects that initiated direct dialogue between different communities and settings in regional Hungary. In 2016, Krétakör received the ECF Princess Margriet Award for Culture 2016 for its social work.

The Vaccine is an idea of Arpad Schilling, developed in cooperation with the Forum on European Culture

Director: Árpád Schilling

Production: Forum on European Culture

Production coordinator: Ildikó Ságodi

Video editing: Nestor Romeo Clemente