Dobro. Mi je Tomas Gass. Je zjavljenja, kratiča, in kreator v Andrii. Čakaj, da se možemo vzvečiti. Vzvečo. Vzvečo. Vzvečo. Kler Marsha je z vsev Kajov. Vzvečo. Vzvečo. Če je prič nekaj, čas vsi našelje in zelo sprem, nekaj, če zelo bilo, če bi se pravno tega doživila. Oče je čokoliko, da so hvala, in več, v tej bolj nabijali, ne zelo representovati šošin, ... nekaj, da smo tudi tudi, da sem bilo, da so bilo bolje, če bi se veliko od Evroga, ki so vzlušati, da je to je zelo zelo. Zelo sem zelo zelo, da smo v Polizji, in zelo zelo previzivnih, zelo previzivnih, ker vzelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo. Vzelo, da sem zelo zelo zelo, da sem zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo. Kajurje. Locovače, če bo napravil. Sreč me poznajo, če je tako v U.K. So mi je lahko vzetka, zato k jezine, kaj je ježi, ker je ta svoj je in njiha še je ovo vzetka, če je to svoj doVIN, tukaj je nekaj reak bottles. Mi je vzetka, če je... kaj je kaj? the Have a It, which in the corner is the very far southwest tip of England. It sticks out into the bottom. A car is called a square for a hill and a cove is called a beach or a cove. So car to cove reaches do the top of the hill right down to the sea. in na med offensive skuja, zelo samo še vsem. Občasno vsem je, da po večtina je bilo ročnoov, in prijezoma je spremtno k twice fighter, ki je Vedno svojo izpat. Tkaj je kot ročna, je napravljaj, ki je dativči, prijezoma so, na tjeve ročne spremtne, in tjezavanje. ...or more up to the tip of Scotland, the Highlands of Scotland up there in the North East. And we are overseeing all this sort of brought together by the National Royal Touring Forum, ...which was set up around 30 years ago to act as a sort of unifying voice for all the different touring scenes. And they allow half and they work as a network of networks. And the National Royal Touring Forum is a network of all the different touring networks. So I'm mainly going to talk about Kanta Code and the model that we run, ...because obviously that's what I know the best. But all of the touring scenes really run on a very similar model in the UK. So my presentation is really to remind me of what I do, ...to show you some pictures. So I've got to navigate now, pressing the buttons and speaking to my friends. Amazing. Okay, so Kanta Code is called performing arts theme, as I said. So we're one of a national network. So there's just another picture to illustrate, but a bit of a Cornish dance game. So we're a very rural part of the UK. There's a lot of economic deprivation in Cornwall. And it's seen as a beautiful place because there's a lot of people on holiday there. And it is a beautiful place to live. And then I go up there and I live there. But the population of Cornwall are large parts of our population living in poverty. And there are people who are four miles away from the beach and never beach before. So it's a county mixed street. So there's a lot of wealth.  So lots of people come there on holidays. And they buy homes that people can't afford to buy. So lots of our villages are suffering from a sort of drain of the population. And we exist in a way for the Cornish population. So our program is generally in the non-tourist season. So our program is primarily for the local population. Not that we don't love the tourists. So as a national network, the NRTF has around 13 member schemes, as I say, from Cornwall up to Scotland and the whole of Wales as well. And so on a local, I think we might be very small scale in our village halls. So as we felt small. So on the scale of the work that we program is small. But as a whole, we have quite a large voice, a large footprint, and a lot of the turnover is generated in the work that we do. So as you can see, there are 30 speeds, 1,650 promoting groups, which are primarily volunteers. So promoters are volunteers who live in their communities, and they give up 110,000 voluntary hours. And we show our rates to around 330,000 people, and over a million, perhaps, is generated. So this is in a typical year, and this is basically pre-pandemic numbers. We're still struggling to get back to those numbers. But we exist in order to enable the communities to present something that's a little bit different to what they should do, so we financially support them, we're funded to do that. And we kind of, our reforce is very much doing with, not doing to, so we work with the communities, as I say, they're volunteer promoters who live in their communities. They change what they want. We don't tell them what they have to program. It's very much done at the grassroots level. But we are funded so that we can pay the artists a professional fee, so that we don't subsidize the artists. We pay them for their wage, but we subsidize the communities so that they deny to pay financial risk on a professional event. We kind of feel that just because you live in a rural area, there's no reason that you can't have access to really high quality professional work, so that we work so that we can bring performers to very small communities. And, as I say, we subsidize that risk for the promoter. So how does it work? Our scene works, and as I say, most of the work are on the same name, same models. We, as an organization, on a very small scale, as myself and one of the first in our team, we put together a program of events that you can call it, and we put that together from seeing work, having contact, having networks, and having the experience of what comes with companies, and there are companies that work in rural touring throughout their careers, so they create their work with rural touring in mind. We don't see that as a limitation, we don't see that at a small scale and not rural as a limitation on the kind of work that we offer. We try and challenge our audience as much as they do. So we put together this menu, we try and get a broad range of different types of events, and then we offer these out to our promoters, we invite them to a menu party, we come together twice a year in an event just like this. I'm standing here with the power of the week, they're sitting there listening to all we're presenting, everybody brings a plate of food, we're sharing the intro, artists come and perform on extracts or speak about their shows, and they meet the promoters during the break, and this is really got these public conversations where they kind of get to know each other a bit better. And then they choose one event per season at least on the dice, and we encourage them to do the covers, so we've got experience promoting our network, and they are quite happy to take the risk on certain shows that they know, that they can sell, and then ask Can't Go to support a little bit out of their comfort zone, and that's what we love, is when we offer up a range of things, so kind of a different subsidize model. So that's just a little picture of our team, we had four of us, now we have two, and we made it to the almost, so if you're interested in seeing it, it's a sort of love in that, really, to Can't Go that we made last year in the anniversary, so it's on our website, so please, have a look, and watch it in formation. So a typical, so here are some stats, I always love stats, I kind of, we take a lot of data from our audiences, and from our promoters and artists, and every now and again I approach those, and I look at the pictures of the grass, and I think it is amazing what we do. There are about 4,000 people attending, around about 150 events per year, so we average about 72 audience numbers in each show, and that varies, because some of our forms are tiny, and the maximum capacity is, so our audience is 50 people, and then we work in tenors, as well, which are larger, so they can have up to 400, but generally, our average size of venue is around that. As I said before, we pay artists a full fee, so they don't have to take the risk of doing a box office split with the promoter, we spend around 65,000 pounds of our budget each year on artist fees, which is about, well over half of it, and that's been on artists that are from all, so we have quite healthy network of artists making work in all, so we kind of see it as our job really, to bring artists from up the line, outside of, within the UK and even internationally, we bring artists into the hall, so that we can give our audiences access to what can really be done well from all over. Ticket sales are the second biggest part of our budget, so we get funding from the government and the arts council, so we have public funding money which we put into the scheme, we're also supported by our local authority and then we generate excellent income. So the way the finances work is the village hall will pay us 80% of the box office takins that they made on the show, and they keep 20% of the box office of their own immunity event, so the interval, everybody has a cup of tea, a piece of cake, they take part in a raffle, I don't know if you have raffles here, but they're really important in the UK, you buy a raffle ticket, the same prizes go around, you know, to run it again, everybody wants the wine, when it's left at the bubble bath, nobody wants it, so they put it back in for the next time, but you have to do it, and that generates income for the rooms, so it's going back into the community. And we generate big program about 55 different artists, different companies, in our two seasons. We always kind of talk to our audiences, we like to know what they like, we use the data in our programming choices, the most, I don't know whether you can see this, but the biggest sort of response that we had is you can come to enjoy the atmosphere here, even though the program is really important, and the quality of the work is really important, actually coming out and being with friends and family in the community is really important to our audiences, our reputation, come to those reputation, and performing arts is an important part of who I am, these were scored in highly, nobody really comes to our events for peace and quiet. The nice thing about seeing a show in a village hall is that the audience generally always know each other and they feel the sense that it's their space and that the artist has been invited into their space, so when you're an artist performing in a broad drawing venue, then I imagine it's quite a different experience working at the theatre, you're going into the space, and the community come out and see you, they kind of own the space, they want to talk to you, because you've come into their space, so it's very rare that an artist will come in and leave without having a social time audience that help them clear away at the end of the night, if they want to help or not, sometimes they can stay overnight in the village that would be given a bed in a promoter's house or somebody in the village and that would give them a hot meal In Cornwall we have a performing art university, we have a university and we have quite a lot of young artists coming out of there, new graduates in emerging companies so we'd like to support those in the platforms so that they continue to work in Cornwall, so we support artists throughout all parts of their career, there are some really established artists living in what in Cornwall as well, in doing rural touring, small scale theatre performances for all their careers and there are others around as I say around in the network and as I said at the beginning it's really important for us to feel that we're connected internationally and so we have as a South West region in the UK we have a really close connection to our South West neighbours and we often program tours from European companies who tour the South West and they make a tour and it makes it much more valuable and cost effective for the company to come across the channel and we are also mindful of our place in the cultural sector of Cornwall because Cornwall the creative industries are quite important to the local economy we don't have them apart from tourism we don't have very much industry but relatively we offer a lot of opportunities and so when we come to cove works as a real network we connect with our cultural sectors in Cornwall that's the end of that slide and we talk about that but hopefully that will give a general idea I think it gives more than a general idea because we are listening to your presentation from an Eastern European perspective you know it feels like we are in the real utopi so thank you very much and that's I think it was a good decision or suggestion from somewhere to start with this presentation today because now the question is on the table are there any other countries in Europe or other systems or that are so might be level and that so many promoters and artists and everything that so complex network like the UK model so what are your work Julia, I ask you about the Romania situation of course then we can't start with that I have to I have to start by saying that there is at this point country that takes advantage of it being very small to have developed a wonderful system that I am training about I am talking about Estonia which has a system according to which each theater that receives a subsidy has to perform to perform tours in the countryside so that it is a national scheme because Estonia again it is very small so that each person can have the access to a performance within 50 kilometers of its residents the history of our residents so there is a national planning let's say there are certain productions that are done especially for touring because not every villager has a structure for the huge set design and so on and lighting and so on and there is a sort of a quota of tours that the company has to do according to its size the subsidy and so on but this is and there is a services for touring maybe in the summer but it is done so that it is ordinary and it covers the whole country Estonia is the size of Cluj the Thai sport well maybe in Romania we don't have a system yet so how many people have access to a theater within no matter how many kilometers but we have a plan the planning in general there is a history of it it starts in the dark times of communism when theaters were supposed to were asked to tour and there were 12 in the 1980s so starting in 1984 first they had this obligation of touring and then starting in that year they had covered the only expenses up to 70% which meant that the touring got a new importance because it helped somehow together with the money 30% of self-injency but at the same time it was a time when there was no thinking electricity in generalism something that we all remember in our own context which means that the professional artists in that context that professional artists theater artists were going in theaters in public theaters developed a sort of a intense hate towards touring especially in the countryside which coupled with another event something else that is related to the second part of the 70s and 80s which is the festival a national national white festival called the Song of Romania that put on the same level professional artists and amateur artists which developed for the professional artists a frustration towards amateur theater which means that we met in the 1990s with professional artists that hated going in the countryside and hated having somebody without a film at the theater the general dissaprise towards amateur theater is still very vivid in Romania almost vivid from the part of professional theater the artists that are involved in big production themselves well, but in the same part in the countryside countryside has a large infrastructure the famous houses of culture so jumping to 2009 sort of 20 years 20 years after when the hatred towards touring in the countryside decided a little or there was a new generation that didn't develop such and didn't develop such as independent artists first developed by them and then came to the Ministry of Culture the new important Ministry of Culture with the proposition of public policy for the renovation of these houses of culture for touring theater the product was called touring in the countryside it was part of a whole vision about building communities through theater by group of young theater makers and then some of them some of them then developed some other lines working strictly related to this renovation of the houses of cultures first the pilot program made that they produced certain performance which was based based on real facts or something that happened in a small countryside school and then they presented it in part of rural community communities in which they had let's say some connections so they wanted to have rural community they not present them an outside project so somehow they relied on personal connections we built the village of the father of one of the artists and some of the kids and actually one of the things I was several such performances in the bad communities and what was absolutely marvelous it was the fact that it activated different generations of members of the community some of them having memories about the cultural activities in those places in the houses of culture which went from theater performances from the city to popular music in which they were involved but then the minister of culture was changed we have a specialty in changing the minister of culture and it is in time in terms of aspiring other parties in the few years afterwards there was another mission that celebrated the ten years last year called Culture in the Bar which is somehow similar in the idea of presenting a performance not an educational project not enough therapies not something related to vulnerable groups but without using the infrastructure because what happened between 2009 and 2015 in some things like that was that some of the houses of culture were rehabilitated but without the very precise purpose and others somehow disappeared into the night of the waiting for LZ and because some of these houses of culture were very politicized in the local political something they are doing this in the courtyard of one person of a village or another they are not coming to places where they have personal connections they develop these connections they install themselves in the courtyard of a local and they work with locals so in development of performance that is actually done by them and they are they are professional actors but in the new definition so they are not involved and the addressability that is because they are developing the performance there because there are several things and they want to adapt to the specifics and needs of the community and the addressability is as large as possible so from children so let's say in English the two older people so which means that a certain language is required and so and with some financing national cultural fund and variety of local support but actually differently from what happened in the country side they don't want our policy and they don't want to be in the state they are receiving these funds from the national cultural fund which the maximum for performing performances performance production is 70,000 euros that's the maximum and you have to cover anything and because it is in only national source of money the competition is harsh so now with 70,000 euros buy the cow feed the cow kill the cow sell them everything but they receive this money because at some point those in part are to do it introduce it among the priority criteria to find those projects in this contributing to places that don't have access to culture usually it means developing educational projects but the problem with education we do have a line of production in theater based on educational projects but again this is something that is disconnected for everything else so there is no policy on we don't even know what part of the map is covered by these projects we don't know now happening in some places we even live to see a situation where in the same village the same community after a bigger project was developed there there was another project because they didn't know what happened previously so it is very disconnected because how communities are chosen by the operators is very random where local authorities are not open where the distance is reasonable from where the artists come from because it is 70,000 euro we go from bigger restaurants to more positive so the community is tough when they reach like 14 years there is nothing over the future and what is going to happen with the rf for those who don't know and I don't know who doesn't know it every country in the European Union has this recovery in the zilias plan and in the with money from the European Commission and in recovery in the zilias plan of Romania there is one bonus movie which is a pilot program of financing for cultural projects in places with less than 50,000 people living on board where there is no matter how little co-financing from the local authority which is local very local origin and the fund is for this pilot program which also extract data about where these projects are what is the national distribution which will also gather information where are those local authorities willing to support that and it has a budget of 4 million euros which is more than the funds for one session of the GNA for all the arts so that we have the level of poverty here and why we are trying to well in that house with 70,000 people who is interested there is this program there is the draft of the cards for this program in the GNA and it will happen because if we don't spend this money that's the most important in this plane if you don't do it and if you don't spend that money all the financing starts and we are not doing this this program of financing culture, projects in our communities maybe I won't have money for high fees Excuse me, can you switch please the wireless mic please, what is this? OK OK Yeah, well it was very intense Yeah, it was very intense Thank you Yeah, and you know I was thinking maybe I will stop a bit because I think it makes sense to just to show how things work in Hungary Actually I wrote it's not a present but I can hire it to you it's called really it's a promotional material for dating a program which is just take a look at it which actually was made in 2020 to send theater shows in Hungary to the countryside and inverted Julia Mesh in some historical roots of the Romanian situation we also have to mention just a few words also the old times the old times in Hungary because in 1950s from the 1950s to the 1970s there was a theater called state theater in Hungary and its aim was to send shows to the countryside for those who do not know in Hungary she was an actress so we can translate as Mrs. Dery she was an actress in the mid 19th century iconic actress of Hungarian culture I think the name of the program also gives an impression to what this new dating program founded in 2020 it was made by the national theater in Budapest in Hungary in centralizing everything so nine member committee closely connected to the management of the national theater they decide to send shows to present in the countryside and so on and so on I just checked out their homepage and it says that in this season so the 2020 or 2023 season you in the anyone in the countryside can order a show they have like more than 100 shows online where you can choose from if you have a venue and you can order these shows there are different routes I won't go into details but what is interesting and maybe a little we can talk about it that the dating program they pay for everything for the artists in every cost when I go there as a spectator I have to pay for a ticket for 200 forints which is half euro so it's practically nothing the average ticket price in Hungary is like 8 to 10 euros or for the more expensive shows it's like 28, 25 euros so you can compare it with this half euro price where do they play well this network of housing and culture we also have in Hungary from the dark times from the communist times in the last 30 years use them actually because they are huge buildings we know real function so these shows many times there and it's a very I think it's a very exciting initiative because in Hungary practically there is no cultural mobility so everything is concentrated in Budapest, the capital of Hungary and in the countryside it's very very difficult to see small independent productions of course we have the system of the so called spawn theaters it was made after the Second World War and you know we always say that the biggest merit of Hungarian theater is the the system of these spawn theaters the ensemble, the repertory and so on but in the last decades nobody wanted to deal with those people in the countryside we do not have the chance to see how it is here and doing a program wants to do something like that but there are many many problematic respects about this thing and there are very I would say spectacular numbers of course for the last season and they have huge plans they have their own company they have a brand new venue very close to the National Theater actually they have all the money they need but it still comes all from above so it has nothing to do with the communities with their needs their desires someone from the center from the National Theater decides what is good for you and what is not which is I think it's a very special Hungarian model yes, of course ok, so Csombor and of course you don't have to go into details with all the other models you know from Europe not much about Italy and the Swedish the Norwegian model and of course the Romanian model as well but so how can you connect to these these thinking ok so, one of the models that I know of besides the UK model is the Swedish one which is also a national network covers the whole country in existence for several decades as well one of the differences compared to the English model the Swedish one is called Riks Theater the big national one and then this Riks Theater has smaller agencies in the different regions so we will have Riks Theater in Babylon and so on but one of the big differences compared to the way it works in the UK where you are practically trying to collect a pool of artists who they all develop their own work wherever they can is that in Sweden this Riks Theater has a very big factory in Stockholm of several levels where they have rehearsal rooms and studios for artists to work in so they basically commission artists to do new work with rural touring in mind so specifically for rural audiences and they give them these spaces in this I don't know four or five story theater factory they give them the money to pay themselves for their rehearsal work for their creation and they give them the money to make these productions which then get toward in the network and this is all state funded and so sort of you don't have to always put forward an application and so on so this is rock solid it is it is funded you can count on it as an artist that if you wish to engage with this kind of work if you are not only thinking about Milano and Sydney and New York then you have the opportunity to do it and this is it's work you can read from it and it has value okay another model that I know and I would like to mention is the Norwegian one which they have a program called the cultural rock sack this is a program aimed not at adults but at children they work together with all the schools in Norway again it's a national model with national funding with regional agencies who are working with the schools in their region and this cultural rock sack basically allows each school in the country to host at least one professional performance a year for the tubeless so what is valuable for me in this model is that the way the tubeless get to see a performance and come in contact with the artist and with different art forms not just theater but also dance or music is not accidental is not relying on if I know a school principle or in the school where I used to go I still know the principle so I will go to her but if I don't know the principle in the school next door I will not go to them so there is this accidental is it going to happen or is it not going to happen so here you would have schools where the tubeless have the chance to watch I don't know 5 or 10 performances per year in their own school so they don't have to go to a theater theater comes to them and then there are schools where they don't get to see any performances at all so this is why such a model for me is very exciting and again it gives continuity and it gives ability and it gives a sort of clarity that you will have access to it every year, year by year and then another model is the Italian one I received a power point from our Italian partners but maybe it's maybe we can just see a few slides from that this model in Italy they have regional organizations so one of these is Amat, Associazione and Mapigiana Activitati Adriatici so they work in the Marque region of Italy and there are several other similar agencies or organizations in other regions and these organizations again they receive money from the state in order to fund and finance artistic activity in their region so this model is not just about rural touring here you can see the region where Amat develops their work and the different promises that make up the region it's not just about rural touring so going to very small villages you would have towns bigger towns, smaller towns but again it's this idea that you don't have to go to the big center to the big cultural center for instance like Kruge or to the capital Budapest, Bucharest and so on but you can have access to art and culture in other smaller towns and villages as well so their funds come from ticketing, income from spectators sponsors public money from the Ministry of Culture and this money goes into making new productions programming and other activities pedagogical educational activities here we could see that in 2019 for instance Amat had 823 shows in that year we can also see the funds that they were dealing with so again if I compare this to I don't know Euro and as I said it's not just about theater it's also about dance about music, about circus contemporary circus different interdisciplinary projects contemporary theater contemporary dance contemporary music and so on these are some of the projects that Amat was involved in in European projects one of them is the SPARS which you can see in the down right corner is one creative Euro funded project that Shoshinoz also involved in in the last 3 years where we were trying to develop and implement a similar model to the English one of course other kind of projects as well for the elderly they are trying to make one of the towns of culture so this is the presentation that our partners sent through which I wanted to show you briefly these are the models that I know that I can think of and I can talk about generally not too specifically and also maybe just shortly to what Junior was saying is about the cultural insurance for instance we Shoshinoz as I said we are trying to develop this model for us for instance it's important to have this state funding it's important to have a network it's important to be able to count on that money so from this perspective as even though being guerrilla is very inspiring and romantic I would still me personally I still believe in the system a network which is publicly funded and which guarantees access to people for people to culture and arts again so that it's not accidental and I just wanted to add one more thing to this model of the 80s touring there were state theaters in Romania which continued to implement this model even in the 2010s for instance the theater from Vjerkoriak-Chuk I don't even find giving speaking theaters because they serve a community so this could be yes but Bartališ Krabi who is a member of this theater from Vjerkoriak-Chuk is here with us so maybe at a certain point we can connect her to say some words about did they really hate doing it and where the theater is today in 2020 with regard to this practice yeah there were for instance, there are several theaters jitra theaters that are still doing it outside big cities for instance the Jadien theater in Bruneš which also is bilingual and being funded by the regional council it takes it seamlessly so it takes seamlessly that it serves the community the region, not only the city of the Bruneš something that does happen with the national theater in Tukmureš which apparently serves the nation of Tukmureš the same with one national theater we have several seven nations served by national theaters well individually and let's not go into this you know there is a large bibliography about how much we hate our actors hate it going in Tukmureš it's stuff of the legend and it definitely it definitely affected how many because it's a long story we played here between 1990 and 2004 with a leg in 2008 we played here the centralization which ended up with theaters being allocated to one authority or another according to whomever authority wanted so there is no plan why one theater is subsidized by the local council and another one by the county we don't even know why we have several national theaters but let's not go into them we have one national theater which is national but it's subsidized by I don't know the local yes the city city so it is national and Tukmureš it's an history but the only reason was they played hide and seek in galac for instance in 1999 so it was given first to the county council so the regional council then it was the county council said we don't have money for it anymore so you take a city hall the city hall took it and get rid of the manager the second day after but the only reason was because the county said we don't have money this year so we take it so there is no in the logical things according to the local and public policies the local theater should serve the local community the county theater should serve the whole county and the national theater that's I don't know what it stays a question in the history as well in the last 200 years so we still don't know the answer I wanted to ask you guys because for those still not sleeping there is a question that raises so all these models they are very different but there are some for some parallel situations and some parallel solutions so there is a name question why don't these countries communicate with each other and maybe it's time to speak a bit about spars if I am right this initiative tries to to take this whole thing in level and I don't know if Claire or John Boer would share some ideas because if I am right it leaves behind this national context in a way so so sparse is a project the name sparse stands for supporting and promoting arts in rural settlements of Europe and as John Boer said earlier the UK was a lead partner not Kanteco, but a fellow was the lead partner in that project and we our roles really in mentoring the four other partner countries Estonia, Lithuania Italy and Romania to set up rural touring models in those countries based on ours we have had this longstanding kind of established model so the beginning of the project all of the organisations visited Cornwall and identified local promoters within their regions or their countries in Estonia it was a national project as you say and the promoters came to Cornwall and we gave them a trip around and we took them to see a show we introduced them to our local promoters and some artists for three days we immersed ourselves in all things rural touring and the local promoters from each country got to know each other and their fellow promoters and then they went back they took back learning to their own countries and then they set up these three tours in their own countries and they were all slightly different depending on the needs and the conditions of their countries needs so Estonia our partner was the national dance agency so they focused on dance performances that they were national in Lithuania it was a regional project in a private around the question of the Lithuania job was to help the Romanian model and as you've seen it was in the market and the project was three years long the pandemic was a little bit so it kind of impacted the activity and the numbers our target numbers that we made in film traumatic the evaluation of the project and I think when we entered it at the end of last year we were walking in together with the partners and the reflection was what an amazing three years there have been what an amazing journey we've been on and the network now will continue the creative Europe project is ended and the UK input is ended because of our already mentioned exit but the network continues we're inviting more partners but I think we're waiting on the results of the funding in response to what that will become and how that network will develop with the additional partners so I don't know what I'm adding maybe just that Sparse was the project funded by Creative Europe but during the project other other organizations from different countries approached us saying we would like to take part so basically at a certain point we constituted what we call the Sparse network which is a network of about I don't know 25 organizations in different countries in Europe it's not a formal network but it what connects us is these shared aims so this is something that anyone can can join and we would be trying to see in the future how it would function as a sort of a platform which would advocate on a European level for more serious funding for arts in rural areas all around Europe so this was the Sparse and its little offsprings potential potential for developing so there is the European dialogue where there might be a continuation of this dialogue what has started with Sparse so not only these separate models national models which is good to hear and of course there are many many questions rise but I strongly recommend these 9 minutes long or short film of the YouTube channel of Kanto Kov celebrating the 20th anniversary and it gives I think perfect impression on your work and there are some very interesting details in it for example when there is a sequence about the genres and there is a circus artist speaking with the help of the National Laboratory Forum they approached places they've never imagined before and I was thinking about so what is the ideal genres for your touring what is your experience because for example circus and dance as you mentioned in the Italian case yeah it sounds evident those you are surprising for many people and you know just I think it would be nice to talk a little about about about the shows themselves so what are the selection criteria genre wise or length wise technical wise and so on well personally I don't think there is any show that can't be shown in a rural context really I mean some need more work than others but actually I don't think it should be a negative in any company I mean the typical rural touring show is something that will go in the back of a van and can be driven by the actors who are also the technicians or stage manager or tour manager so you know there is a kind of requirement to be flexible to get on with you know you turn up and then you don't know what you're going to get you might have an overhead light you might have a rig but you can't assume that you're going to have anything so you need to be able to put your show on with what you can carry with you but you know in terms of genre we have done circus tours and we've had Chinese halls in individual with some workout doors and we've had you know contemporary dance which has been personally I feel that watching contemporary dance performance in a village hall is the best place to see it so close you can see the sweat on the dancers' faces you can hear the feet on the floor in your part of it when I see a dance show in a big theatre now I feel so removed it's a different experience so there is an intimacy in rural touring but I don't think it should be a prohibition to anything really being on the program and having it successful there is additional funding required to tour a dance show because it has more infrastructure that costs are larger but anything can be possible What about the artistic side I'm in the artist's side so just much a contemporary dance I think creators and artists of contemporary dance they are used to different conditions so what is the feedback from for example I think it's fair to say that if you are an artist who is new to rural touring there is an element of learning that you have to go through and so when we did the rural touring dance project there was a lab that we set up for artists who haven't worked in rural touring before but were interested so it was a residential lab for three days where they came and they met volunteer promoters and they went to see village halls and they kind of understood how their work might need to be adapted for a rural family having a dance hall is not impossible in a village hall but sometimes it does need a little bit of work you need to kind of tour around the dance hall so there are exceptions I think that need to be managed sometimes I went to the Edinburgh festival in August and I met with some companies and they said to me come and see my show I really want a rural touring and then you go and chat to them they don't really want a rural touring they want their show to be or to theater spaces in rural locations but we don't actually have them so they have you kind of have to talk to them about what is actually possible with their big sets and their large cast and the requirement for addressing the rural tourists I think I just mentioned before a discussion to John Moore that it might be a very historical moment right now on the edge of everything the economic crisis the pandemics or everything and this is a time for example in Hungary at least some theaters have to be closed down because they will not be able to pay the charges because of electricity and I think that's why talking about these different models make very strong sense today because as I can see and that is my question to you as well to all of you this kind of rural touring might show escape route for theaters in a way I think there's also the environmental kind of consideration touring is not completely free than running a big theater so the portal of rural touring takes and shows to people there is that kind of offsetting so economic economic factors environmental factors do stand up so I'm curious what is your opinion on this topic so yeah I think that on the one hand there will be a forced green transition for the STEM theaters and the development of other forms of work because yeah okay touring has a lighter climate footprint yes but not if you take a big truck running on gas from Kruž to Jaš and then you come back because you only have one presentation there there is a whole thinking about how how when extending the network can also be as climate neutral as possible yeah but of course if you have if you go there by a big truck and if you have like four or five performances in our closing so it's not by itself by itself nothing is guaranteed not to mention that the whole global theater was running on touring but it was touring by plane which is not free and so that on the other hand we will see increase of the use of technology on the part with going back to the analogic but it doesn't prevent the need the forced need for the big theaters to just change their production models and to change the whole thing with the big theater as you know it's not doable to just imagine that you take all the artists out from Bucharest to just spread them doing the rural theater around that's not going to happen including because it's not financially sustainable and the financial sustainability and the human sustainability human resource sustainability are also important and again just changing the band of the big sets and the big theaters are going to smaller things all of a sudden has an impact on certain theatrical professions on all the workshops of production of those big sets because they are not always doing that there are sets of people and certain professionals and yet we still have to I think everything will change but I don't know how ready everybody is because in Romania at least everybody is hanging from doors of the big stone theaters and they are still waiting for the state to pay the huge gas and electricity bills because we don't want to think about changing the lights of projectors because you know a lead projector doesn't go blexed with enough speed and things like that and again yes in Romania we have this and the same in Hungary and all over the region we have these very big stone theaters built in another time with halls that are too large for one the current audience the current ones are production because of the production changing up so that it's very difficult to find something a product to do do something for a thousand spectators to us yeah but we are still so we are moving in inclusion this happens in the Hungarian theater because the hall is so big we move the spectators on the stage in the same interhumo in a lot of places in Romania yeah but we are still hitting the hall the hall it's very easy actually very delicate and I think it's a good moment to just put the foot in the door yeah I absolutely agree so what about your foot in the door absolutely a few years ago I was envisioning the same thing for myself ok no this has to stop at some point in the future state theaters this rock theaters they will have to realize that you cannot do sets with 150,000 euro and then play that performance three times and then take it off the program because you can do 150,000 divided by 17,000 how many how many affectionate projects can you do from just one set play three times almost that so somehow we have to be forced into finding new ways and I was thinking in the next 10, 20 years this change has to happen and of course the things and the critical moment that we are in is not very nice but in a certain sense I am happy for for this that maybe maybe the circumstances are just forcing us to do this and then there are some questions which we cannot escape from anymore and it should be time to look in the mirror and start answering these questions the problem is I think there is still and there will be a lack of communication in the upper levels and my foot so I don't know I can try to kick the door but I keep getting the impression that I am kicking a door which is actually a wall and I want the porter said oh yeah there is the door that's what I wanted to say that in Eastern Europe first you have to find the right door put the foot in all the doors yeah for this you have to be a sort of a superman because in the previous panel we heard from the colleagues how difficult all this is so it's still a mystery to me even though I think yes the time is maybe it's good because of the circumstances it's still a mystery to me whether we will be strong enough have energy enough or we will have a critical mass since we have this pilot project with 4 million euros which is very nice we have to spend it because otherwise we will not be able to do our highways but this is a pilot project what is going to happen afterwards this is my question is it going are the people who give the money will they ever think about oh how nice we should do a second, the third what if it proves a huge burden to find enough local authorities interested in giving 5 euros because you know it's something for the community we cannot keep on enlightening communities by deciding from the above and from buglers what they have to do within their own communities that's the whole idea with the local co-financing because they have to be willing to have this within their community and it proves that there's not enough local authorities willing to do it because you know it's European Commission it has a number there it's not like we give you the money and we are making some between the European Commission and the media I imagine so then you come back and you define the strategy in order to increase the interest either through the character or the speak for the local authorities that's a pilot it gives you data it gives you information and then you can go further it's you don't do the second one the same you take the data from the first file and you adjust it so that it can work and it can work it can be done with the money enough that you can it can be done in many many other ways but you know it's like jumping to the next level let's see what this this program brings because if it proves that the local authorities don't want cash to come back and find it a way to either convince them or force them or combination of them OK guys čokovar will fire me if I don't stop this conversation no he will fire me no I changed my mind OK OK maybe it's a time we can ask Bobby if you have anything to add OK čokovar will translate čokovar will fire me if I don't stop OK čokovar will fire me if I don't stop OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK Tako, si...  Zelo je pravdu, da so ročili, da so tukaj kot pričeličili, da je artistično izgleda však bitiririririririri, ker je zelo za konditionski, in je bilo odlično v tem viziji.   V totem tudi, neče, nire, kaj v nostru apetat, to povacet se skrimači o nrcega oraši, kare je svebine na konučenje veke oraši, stabiliti v treci, enorm, tudi s spektakole in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, potreben s spektakole doar, dakle aceste sate potlati, preču, spektakole rejka, vrej, karejra enorm, veči ta upinbreak v acesta, in s kata primarilor, in aceste sate, podreben, v dodea una, in tim, da tudi ljudevare, tudi, prejrem se, meče, v pochodata. Zdaj, še, o, o, o decesitate, še, e, o dormi taj, v parte, aceste sate, še, i kastelne, te dole quality.  To je prakta v 2018, Nekone revolje ob reguljih ljubov, vzdišljili da je prišelene javljevene, roli sevali. To njesse, nekone, nekone, nekone, dobro. Ne pahalili na najvej prejnške pahalje. Tega nekaj, pejmo na bolje. Do vzdoke je z nješem predvila, Kaj je bilo naredil in možno, da ima praviti produkcije, ker naredil nekaj nekaj zelo. Na samim različenih vseh, da imamo tudi, da bojimo, da bojimo, da bojimo, da bojimo, da bojimo, da sojimo, da sojimo, da sojimo, da sojimo, da sojimo, da sojimo, da sojimo, da sojimo, da sojimo. Zelo mi je vse značil, da se ne zelo. Sreče sem lega so, in ki sem je bilo, da se dobeli. In početno, da bi početi, da je v tem zelo na našem. Vse zelo na našem se prijevamo, če vse so nekaj početno narediti, da bi se početno posredil v zelo. Ponečno, Klamu, da početno. Fruh zelo, tako da. Svoje, ne bilo se, da ne moramo spravojiti o zelo izgledanjem kulturno servicju. Svoje je dočetka v lokalj tamtej drži, da je da je prihvalo izgledanje. To je biliče, administracije, ki ne zavrečajo za nekaj employees, zelo, da se bolj je objev, nekaj nekaj je izgledanje, ali je teža, da je nekako pravno. To je teža, da da nekako pravno se spremljala. Terma je, da je pričnehovo izvok. Ljudec sem zvoj, da sem nekaj izvok predjev. Kaj je zelo včetno prednijal. Vse je poživaj, da so pričal. po vseh festivalu, organizacji, z njih izvajstvih, ki so, da, protakusti, izvajstvih, zelo smo imeli, da so dobro mene, izgledali, izgledali, izgledali, izgledali, izgledali, izgledali, izgledali, izgledali, zelo se, da, počkega, in priprostali vseh vseh, Ovo je srednje nome, da se je zelo srednje, in inoйte, da je inkubice, skupiče, vzelo, da je zelo, tako, zelo, da je zašlošnje, in zelo, da je zelo nekud všem zelo in zelo.  To je zelo, da se predstavila, da se zelo, da se zelo. Daj, da smo však odličili, da smo však odličili, da smo však odličili, da smo však odličili, da smo však odličili, da smo však odličili, da smo však odličili, Vse nekaj ne. Zato se najkej, da vse bo dobro. Tudi si se dobro, da imamo počutje, da se dobro. Vse, da imamo počutje, da se dobro... Kaj jih se nekaj, da imamo počutje? Vse, da imamo počutje, da se dobro. A potem imamo počutje v 15 minute. A potem počutje.


Thank you so much for coming here today. It's my pleasure to be here. I joined three months ago this wonderful community And I'm really happy and excited to be here, and I'm going to show you today a little bit of the Work that allow me to be here and In I'll try to give you a flavor of where I want my group to be in the next few years At least here at Stanford. So I want to start with Some Historical what I call historical analogies. So I put in this graph here the the pressure of a specific gas I'm not gonna tell you which gas In in the in the recent in the last few years, let's say and you see that the pressure of this gas increase increase Until today. So can you guess which gas this is? Well, I'm gonna tell you it's not co2. It's oxygen Turns out that this is a scale on the billions years and three billion years ago oxygen was started to being produced by some organisms and That started to do photosynthesis and initially oxygen dissolved into the oceans Cause changes to the rocks and so the concentration of oxygen stayed pretty low until it saturated and it Reached the concentration that we have today turns out that it's oxygen is really good for us But it was a dramatic cause a dramatic change to life on our planet when it started to being produced at that time So now we have in a different gas Which is also following a similar path because if we look at co2 in the last 400,000 years Years there have been some fluctuations And I'm not going to go into the details of the reason for that but in the last 200 years We clearly have an increase in the levels of co2 which are probably caused by the use of fossil fuels the the generation of energy through the use of fossil fuels and These levels of co2 have never seen before So we can create an analogy and say oxygen had dramatic Cause dramatic changes to the planet. What is co2 going to cause to to the planet? Maybe something similar. So we need to watch out for that and And So this this brings me to the second question for you We know that the levels of co2 rise because of the use of fossil fuels But we also know that this in these last 200 years that have there have been Tremendous improvements in the standards of living so we can take our car go out go where we want take our Plains and go to to Europe Have our houses cool in summer and and warm in winter So this This changes this use of fossil fuel really cause some some positive Improvements in our standards of living so my question is and this is the energy what I call the energy dilemma What should we choose for the future? So should we choose to go back to when we add less energy to favor a better environment? Because we know that this increase in co2 is causing dramatic changes to the environment or Or should we choose to keep our standards of living? So we still want to have our car We still want to have our house warm in winter, but we are going to get a worse environment in in the future This is the energy dilemma. Well, I hope I'll convince you by the end of this talk that maybe we don't need to choose we can still Still Still have the the the amounts of energy needed to drive our planet and also Leave in in a better environment environment than we have today However to get there that's the energy challenge We need to get there and so we need to be able to meet the the needs of the growing population and in particular the the Growing needs for oil and fossil fuel resources turns out that this is a picture from an American family 1970 with all the oil barrels that they used to consume per year. So that's the amount in 1970 and this is probably Twice and as much nowadays So we need to grow this this need to meet these needs and also be able to provide a better environment Because we want people for example in China or everywhere to be able to see the Sun with their eyes and We don't want them to need a screen to understand where the Sun is rising in in the morning and this this concept was very well described by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development Already almost 30 years ago when they define what sustainable development is which is the development That meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generation to meet their own needs That's our energy challenge to meet sustainable development So that's my way to put this energy challenge. That's the way I compare this energy challenge. It's kind of a race between nature which is the turtle in this case and The hair which is us consuming fossil fuels at a pace at a rate which is That the nature is not able to keep up with so we need to find a way to speed up the turtle if we want nature to win this race and in some way we need to cheat and We need to make sure that nature is able to produce if we want or We need to replace this fossil fuel resources or find it a fuel that is replaced at a much faster pace than what's nature what nature usually does and What is that that science that deals with Increasing the rate of chemical reaction to produce fuels for example Eric introduced that before that's Catalysis catalysis is exactly the science of speeding up reactions And that's probably one of the things that we need here if we want the turtle to win the race and what is catalysis is represented very nicely here in this cartoon instead of Climbing this mountain which is the activation energy needed for molecules to overcome to be Transforming to the products we can take this this tunnel with using a specific call is that take us directly To to the products with a much lower activation energy. That's what catalysis is so The the idea here is that we need to develop better call is to Meet this this energy challenge. So how do we develop better call is I will use this this example the sentence that Gerard Hurtel and noble lecture in 2000 sorry noble prize in 2007 for his pioneering working catalysis used to say Talking about ammonia synthesis, which is one of the most important Discoveries of the 20th century. Well, if we read a sentence from his novel lecture He says large-scale technical production wouldn't off of ammonia in this case would not have been possible without the availability of a cheap call is this task could be solved successfully by Alvin Mitesh who in thousand of tests found that a material exhibited Satisfactory activity and I would point out this thousands of tests. That's exactly the way industry or even like academia in the 20th century used to Find new and better call is basically just trying try the trial that well known Trial and error procedure you try a bunch of materials and you see if it works or not clearly. That's not acceptable In the long term not just because we are wasting materials But also we because we need to solve our issues in a much more compelling way So that's my vision of how to get better call is to Tackle these energy challenges. It's divided into three areas The first one is controlled the second one is understand and the third of one is improved so nowadays we have with nanotechnology the tools to Precisely control the structure of material to the nanoscale and that's extremely important in catalysis because catalysis has always been a Nanotechnology discipline well before nanotechnology was even defined. So we have the control over these tiny crystals in the nanometer scale Once we have this control We can prepare a library of well of well-defined materials that we use to understand the catalytic reaction Mechanisms and we can draw what I call structure activity relationships here Then we can really understand where the the active sites are So we understand the active sites for their reaction Then we can go to the third task and we can Improve the catalytic activity of our materials but by increasing the density of these active sites once we know what what they are and eventually we can go back and Restart the loop and do it even better and that's In my opinion and much better way to find new and better call is that to increase the knowledge about catalytic systems for specific transformations that involve energy and the environment so during my Short talk today. I want to give you three examples of how to control understand and improve catalytic transformation that are taken from my PhD and postdoc research trying to Deliver these idea of how to use this well-defined materials to Understand and improve catalytic reactions that are very important for energy and environmental application So first of all, let me tell you What type of materials we are going to talk about today and these are supported systems It means that we have a small metal particle usually from the transition series and a support Which is high surface high specific surface area highly porous and the combination of metal and the support Which is usually a metal oxide in my case in this case gives rise to the callus Which we hope is extremely active and to give an idea here reported three electron microscopy images of supported systems where you have these arrows pointing to the small metal particles Surrounded by all the this high surface area material So you can understand you can have an idea of how complicated these things are with all these different facets These are all atoms and so on. So these are quite complicated and we want to Facilitate the studies on these materials and how do we do that by controlling? So we go to the first part of my talk how to control these materials to the nanoscale And it's been demonstrated in the last 10 to 15 years that colloidal methods I will talk about that later on as well can result in precise structures Under for for we can control structures In terms of many elements many properties. So for example in terms of size here We have metal nanocrystals of different sizes going from two nanometers here all the way to ten nanometers And these structures are so precise that we can control their their size down to atomic to the atomic scale so one particle differs from another More or less by one atomic layer only that's the level of control that we have nowadays But size control is not the only control that we have over these structures We can also control their shape so not just spherical particles But we can have elongated particles as reported here for this semiconductor nanorod, but we can also Control the composition which is extremely important in cathals. We can control the presence of defects that can also affect the catalytic activity, so we have a Very many knobs to turn in terms of control of the Structures that we can use to then prepare better catalysts And so I want to give an idea of how effective this control is for some Reactions, and I selected this reaction which is called methane steam reforming reaction It is quite simple you take methane and very important energy resource And you trade it with steam or water and you obtain CO and hydrogen and This mixture of CO and hydrogen is what we call industrially seen gas Or synthesis gas because it is used to make a variety of other compounds and this reaction is industrially Extremely important. It's run at very very large scale here reported some pictures of what we call steam reformers And you see the people here which gives you an idea of the scale of this reactor So industrially very important reaction as I said with that seeing as we can make a lot of other important things For example, it is used for ammonia synthesis and ammonia is extremely important to make fertilizers We can use it for methanol synthesis and methanol again It's a very versatile building block for polymers and a lot of other things or for higher alcohol Synthesis and in all these cases we need a specific ratio Between our hydrogen and CO coming out of this reaction Okay, so we need to be quite selective in that ratio and the way industry does that is by tuning This second reaction step, which is called water gas shift reaction in which they take a CO they treat it with an excess of steam and they can regulate the amount of CO2 and hydrogen so they can also Regulate the the CO2 hydrogen ratio here. Okay, so this is done in two steps So my point is can we control instead of controlling this in two step by controlling the nanostructure? So what we did was to prepare palladium nanoparticles nanocrystals palladium is one of the most active Metals for this reaction in different sizes are reported here electron microscopy images of these different sizes of palladium nanocrystal going from very small Let's say to larger it goes from around two nanometers about two nanometers to seven to eight nanometers so still a very very small range and Then we ran that reaction of methane steam reforming and here reported the selectivity towards CO Which basically gives an idea of that CO hydrogen ratio against the temperature and you see that by just changing the Size of the nanocrystals We're able to tune the selectivity of the CO to agent ratio that we can get out of this of this reaction And in particular we can go from very large from what I call very large particles from an agent to CO ratio of roughly three which will be good for example for Methanol synthesis we still need to tune it all the way to an agent CO ratio to roughly 12 Which means that we are approaching the ratios that are better for ammonia synthesis So they control over the nanostructure in one step clearly controls the selectivity for this reaction now I have to admit this is not extremely important for methane steam reforming because industrially it's one of the Most known reactions so we don't need to to work on that But this is just a proof of concept a demonstration of what control of the nanostructure can do for the selectivity of your reaction So if you want naively in the future, I can imagine instead of Well, this is it I'm an engineer so I shouldn't say that but instead of engineering all that that reactor I can engineer What goes into the reactor here and change the selectivity? The way I want that's where the future can be in terms of tailoring the nanostructures So now I want to come to the second part of my talk So we have the control over the nanostructures. What about understanding reaction mechanisms and so Here report the rate of one particular reaction We saw it before is the water gas shifts so CO plus water to give CO to an agent again industrially important reaction now if we run this reaction on the same metal same metal particle size But different supports that that orange is thing that I showed you before that is is used to support the particles Well, if we go from alumina to serum dioxide We can increase the reaction rate by hundred times just by changing the support Okay, and Syria serum dioxide in this case is well known to be a promoter for some reactions And it is well used in catalysis for example in three-way callus fuel cells Oxygen members and so on now what where is the origin of this? Improvement in the cavity activity provided by the support That's what we want to understand by controlling that the nanostructure So the idea was actually quite simple We have control over the the metal nanocrystals, so we take nanocrystals of different sizes We deposit them onto two different supports such as alumina and Syria with very different catalytic properties and we run our reactions of interest trying to draw those Diagrams that I call before structure activity relationships So I'm not gonna be talking about the alumina systems in interest of time But I will be focusing on the Syria supported systems So this is again the level of control that we can get in terms of composition and Size we can get platinum, palladium and nickel nanocrystals going from 1.6 nanometers to 12 nanometers And again these nanocrystals are very very similar in size Which means that the size distribution is very very narrow So one nanocrystal differs from the other by not more than one atomic layer And that's extremely important for what we are going to do with these nanocrystals So then we support these nanocrystals on Syria and then we study a Reaction which is reported here co oxidation and it's just the oxidation simply the oxidation of co to co2 Apparently simple, but the reason why we chose this reaction is because a we know it very very well because it's been studied for many decades and Second it's still an industrial important because co is a toxic gas It has to be eliminated in some way for example in the three-way catalyst in your car So it's still environmentally interesting to study this reaction. So now Here we have the activity of our nine samples I go back We have nine samples three platinum three palladium and three nickel with different sizes on Syria And this is the rate of the reaction of forced co oxidation against the temperature Reimbursed temperature now this graph is is pretty dense, but what we need to Consider here is just basically that the small nanocrystals Reported here with the with the red color perform better than the medium nanocrystals and better than the large nanocrystals Okay, this is the information that we get from this ground and it doesn't really matter actually what metal we are using Whether we are using the very expensive Platinum or the very cheap nickel as long as the particles are small now We want to understand why this happens and to do that we need to build physical models to correlate the structure of With the activity. We have the activity. We need a physical model for the structure So we did that by collaborating with Eric stock at Brookhaven National Lab. We did very accurate Transmission electron microscopy studies of our materials are reported here three representative Microscopy pictures of small medium and large palladium particles We use several of these to build our physical model in which we distinguish the The atoms in each nanocrystal depending on their position whether yet they are on the surface as reported here with the gray color or at the perimeter in contact with the support Which is reported here with this orange color or at the corner again in contact with the support as reported here in blue Okay, so now if we take this physical model very simple and we do just Very easy calculation. So this is theory We are still in the theory and we report the fraction of particular sites Which for us are the surface sites the perimeter sites or the corner sites against the diameter We obtain these three lines for the nine samples we had before this is against just theory just calculation now Because our samples are yes some kind of model samples because they are extremely controlled But we can put them inside a realistic reactor and test the The quality activity and the realistic condition We can also extract the calytic rate for these nine samples Which is reported here as turnover frequency at a specific at a specific temperature Basically just an indication of how many cycles per second This call is not able to to turn over in terms of their reaction So now if we get that number and we report it here We obtain this this black line here which lies in between The the model that we built for the corner sites and the model that we built for the perimeter sites This clear clearly tells us that the active sites are the ones at the perimeter and in contact with the support that's where our active sites are and What this means is that? Syria is such a good support and such a good promoter for this reaction because their reaction happens exactly at that Interface at that perimeter and by changing the nanocrystal size. We are able to change the the Fraction of atoms at that perimeter at that interface and so we are able to tune the Calytic activity of these systems. So now that we know that those Interface sites are the most active sites for the reaction We can go back to synthesis and prepare better call. It's based on this knowledge. So this is the idea of understanding after we control understanding the structures and Use that knowledge to prepare better systems this Leads me to the final part of my talk. So we saw how to control. We know how to control the structures we Understand many things in terms of the reaction mechanisms using this Very well-defined structures now. How do we improve? Calis based on that based on that knowledge and I want to do it Regarding one particular transformation, which is methane oxidation. So we know that methane is extremely important nowadays We have a lot of methane. It's a very good energy resource for many reasons What there is one problem with methane? it is an extremely powerful greenhouse gas and the emissions of an actually methane as a Is 8 to 72 times more harmful than CO2 in terms of greenhouse power So the emissions of methane and they are extremely Bad for the atmosphere for the environment So we have to limit those emissions and even in places where you know You think there there are no methane emissions because you don't see them if you scan this these images in under the IR light then you realize that there are a Huge emissions of methane close to for example oil drilling sites and so on but not only even in in case of diesel engines diesel trucks or Transportation there's the production of a lot of methane emissions that cause very important problems for the atmosphere so this is actually a huge issue and we know that not only CO2 in the last 400,000 years in the CO2 levels increased a lot, but especially with methane you see this is a vertical line So in the in the last hundreds years or so the the the methane levels rise by three times at least So this is a huge problem for the environment and it turns out that methane is an extremely stable molecule because those CH Bonds are extremely energetic and that's why it's a very good energy resource, but they are extremely hard to break So you need Materials that are extremely active to break down those those bonds and transform that into into CO2 and water Which is what we want to do so here. We don't really need to understand The requirements for their reaction because some other people did that for us So there are there there are a lot of studies on methane oxidation here reported one for example But we know that palladium oxide is the best Methan oxidation calories we have nowadays and especially when supported on Syria because of the reasons I told you before because of this interface effect that system is even more active So the point is now we understand what we need. How can we improve? How can we? Increase the density of those interfacial sides between palladium and Syria well our idea was to Build what we call core shell structures in which your palladium is at the core And you have a Syria shell and the interface between the metal and the support in this case is maximized So the number of interfacial sides here is maximized because the the Syria support is wrapping Around the nanoparticles so we developed this synthesis starting from pre for palladium particles all the way to these core shell structures This core shell structure are still colloidally stable because they are stabilized in organic solvents by this Not well-defined organic tails at least I don't want to enter into the details So we treat these as molecules so we can isolate this call this Core shell structure we can put them in a bottle we can spray them We can paint them and these still contain This core shell structure as kind of super molecules So what we could do with this was to take this super molecules Put them down onto a high surface area support and see how they Perform for the methane oxidation reaction, which is what we did So again, the reaction is kind of simple you take methane and you burn it with oxygen to to form co2 and water But the advantage is that co2 is much less harmful than methane in terms of emissions and greenhouse power So here reported the methane conversion against the temperature This is called light off curve for our core shell system here on the top Compared to two more conventional Calvist where your palladium is just sitting on top of either Syria or of alumina and with a mixture of Syria around and There are two important things to note from this from these light off curves here the first one is that the core shell structures deliver much better performance because if you see the temperature of Light off which is the temperature at which hundred percent of your methane is converted This is 400 degrees C for the core shell structure Calis and the other two systems are still well below 50% So the activity is much better as we would expect by increasing the density of these Interfacial sites the other very important and interesting thing is that if you take this temperature window Between 600 and 700 degrees C you have the thermodynamically favored decomposition of palladium oxide to metallic palladium and we know that palladium oxide is the active site is the active phase for this reaction so for example when you when you form Metallic palladium and you decompose palladium oxide to metallic palladium the activity decreases and only by increasing the temperature Then we are able to see an increase again in the activity Of these systems so this is found this characteristic and the composition of palladium oxide is found for any Single methane oxidation Calis based on palladium out in the literature now if we look at the core shell system There's nothing like that and the reason is because these core shell structures And the Syria in the shell is able to maintain palladium in its oxidized form Even up to very high temperatures and it doesn't allow that the composition of palladium oxide which means that the chemistry and the kinetics there are different and Not only we have a high activity for this system by engineering this active site But also this Syria shell forms some kind of a cage around the particle So the particles even at high temperatures don't move around too much And so the Calis turns out are also very stable So you can go up and down up to 850 degrees C and there's no decrease in activity or even do what we call a simulated aging So you keep your Calis at very high temperature for a long time and there is no decrease in activity So I hope I convinced you that by following these three steps control understand Improve we can get much better Calis than we have nowadays To tackle some of the big challenges that we have in energy and environmental applications And I didn't have the chance to go through other interesting projects that I did in the past related to this small molecules what I call small molecules met methane Hydrogen CO2, but I will be happy to talk and discuss with you about this eventually later during the reception so with this I want to thank the people that meant a lot to me in the past present and Hopefully will mean a lot to me in the future years Starting from my PhD advisor Palo for Nazir at the University of Trieste Ray Gordy also PhD advisor at University of Pennsylvania Chris Murray postdoc advisor and my my current fantastic group Thank you very much for listening and I'll be happy to take any questions Thank you again Anybody has any questions just Thank you very much for this very nice Summary of your research and those are the perspectives what it might do for the environment One question is regarding the stability of I mean there's catalytic performance, which you showed is very nice What is the material stability of the catalyst of the catalyst here entertaining right now in particular the question catalyst So it depends on the material that you use So if you're talking about the core shell systems, then we demonstrated that the stability is very good And the structures are maintained even up to very high temperatures as high as eight hundred and fifty degrees See if you are talking about this well-defined Nanocrystals then the stability might be an issue and we cannot go beyond five hundred degrees C If we want to do this structure activity relationship studies So it depends on the reaction that we are talking about and it depends on the material that we are dealing with and In that's that's the general consideration that we have to we have to make Very nice talk On the last part that you showed about the palladium and the Syria in a core shell structure I think you assemble them with some molecules Right if you go back to the picture yet some here, that's right and The mercaptor. Yes. Yes. This is a party I didn't have the chance to go right to the details Which means that the palladium particle and the in the Syria particles and not in contact or do you get rid of the molecules? Yeah, that's thank you. That's a very good question. So in interest of time I didn't have to go through the details, but I have a backup slide here So what we do we need to activate these materials for catalysis. So we need to remove all the organics Before we run our catalytic transfer before we run our catalytic reaction. So basically what we do with calcine So we expose these materials to up here to very high temperatures So all the organic byproducts are removed And then what we have to do is to make sure after we remove these ligands that we still maintain our structure And that's why we did Microscopy studies to make sure that that's that's that's true So what we have here is our alumina callus and with the arrows are the arrows are pointing to bright small dots and if we do what we call energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy we can Find out that these bright dots are formed indeed by palladium and Serium so the palladium and serum are still there even after we remove all the all the ligands and everything And then if we do what we call a line profile scan We can see that the palladium signal comes from inside the Syria signal So we demonstrate that we still have the core shell structure that is in there then further we do I resolution transmission electron microscopy studies and we find out that we have this very small palladium core roughly 2 nanometers Surrounded not by a dense Syria shell, but a shell formed by small crystallites and so Here we have a model of how the The system is in which you have your small palladium particle and the shell is formed by these small Syria crystallized Surround in the palladium particle and so there is contact But there are also small pores here as you can see in some of the some of the images Where our reactants can come in be converted on to the palladium surface or palladium oxide surface and then Be Diffuse back into into the stream. Thanks for a very nice talk You you you show a very impressive control of of your your surface here by a special Set of synthesis techniques, how scalable are they? So if you don't want to make grams or I don't know how much you make probably on the grand scale But you want to make tons can can you scale up this? Yeah, that's so that's another important point Right now we are able to make Grounds of these materials in in the lab. So that's actually already a good starting point. So we are not limited to Micrograms of materials that can be made with other techniques The advantage if you one of this system is that we don't have injections or we don't have any Particularly difficult step during the reaction. It's just what we call a heat up procedure So there are actually companies that demonstrated that you can make maybe not tons of these materials, but definitely tens or hundreds of kilograms In in that sense. So there are for example companies in in Massachusetts working on somewhat related materials Quantum dots and that has been demonstrated to be scalable with with the same nice properties up to again hundreds of kilograms and some of these materials were introduced in in TVs and Some other devices. So it's it's not Hard to believe that this can make their way into the market Do you have some other questions? just more on the stability of the Syria shell so Syria is a It's a compound that Often undergoes oxygen exchange depending on the partial pressure of oxygen in the environment Have you ever done a study or maybe I'm sure there's studies out there about how that affects the stability of the Palladium or Whatever's in the core That's that's a very good question. Unfortunately, I don't have the backup slide But the the thermal treatments actually turn out to be extremely important for the reactivity of the systems and the chemistry of these structures is quite Quite different than conventional systems. So it turns out that when these Samples are calcined to too low temperatures and I mean 500 degrees C. The Syria is too reducible and It causes some deactivation issues that are not Permanent but still important and only when we increase the calcination temperature to Temperatures as high as 800 degrees C We're able to obtain something that is more stable and at that point we obtain something that is more similar to Conventional Syria in conventional high surface area Syria in terms of oxygen storage properties So there's a different chemistry going on into the system, which is which was one of the exciting things of this course as structures Maybe I missed it, but can you talk a little? I'm way back here. Yeah, sorry Can you talk a little bit about what the practical? Applications you see for this kind of a fabulous catalyst well There are practical applications we can we can use the the control Over the the nanostructures to improve for example the selectivity of specific processes or we can Use the compositional control over these structures to again improve selectivity and activity toward these processes because basically the idea is What if you can control these structures really down to the atomic scales, then you have very very well-defined active sites and If you know what these active sites are doing in terms of cattails, then you can control the the entire Calidic process so practical applications are in improving calories that we have today already by Increasing the density of the active sites that and we know what if we know what those active sites are or Make new calories for new processes by tuning the composition the the phase of these systems And by understanding how that affects the the the cali activity So I think the practical applications are several So we are not actually in that sense. We are not creating a new Cali-tic approach. We are just Controlling that much better to understand how to improve the cali-tic systems and we Prepare those cali-tic systems that are that show much much improved activities Any other questions? So let's thank with you one more time. Thank you. Thank you