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The Prince Claus Fund and the Mondriaan Foundation, both cultural organizations based in the Netherlands, are happy to organize for the fourth consecutive year an orientation travel for Dutch and foreign art professionals to Africa, Latin America or Asia.
As a joint initiative, the Mondriaan Foundation and Prince Claus Fund are organizing these orientation travels for arts and cultural professionals from the Netherlands and for relations of the Prince Claus Fund from other countries. In May 2007, a travel to Mexico, Venezuela and Trinidad, organized with the participation of professionals from the Netherlands and Latin America, representing institutions within the field of the visual arts, design and other cultural disciplines.
The goal of this orientation travel is to extend international networks and contacts, and to stimulate the international dialogue between art professionals. A selected number of institutions, such as galleries and museums will be visited.
With this initiative, both organizations want to contribute to a quality intercultural dialogue, stimulating future exchanges between African and Dutch cultural institutions and individuals.
The main objective of the Mondriaan Foundation is to offer the Dutch participants a broad overview of Latin American contemporary art and culture to and to get an idea of recent developments. The Prince Claus Fund’s focus is to offer a platform for debate and exchange: amongst the participants of the trip and the institutions which will be visited.
The Prince Claus Fund is interested in any interesting artists, galleries, musea or other places in Mexico, Venezuela or Trinidad you might know. Please contact Charlotte van Herwaarden, c.vanherwaarden@princeclausfund.nl, if you have suggestions.
Mathare, February 22 - In keeping with a tradition that goes back to 2004, Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA) is currently preparing for the 4th edition of its annual International girls tournament. What started as a tournament for teams from the Nairobi region, expanded in 2004 to include teams from neighboring Tanzania and Uganda. This year, the international flair will continue and it is hoped that even more teams from across the border will make the journey to Nairobi.
The event is a significant component of MYSA’s ambition to empower young women through sports and to create a positive attitude towards female participation in sporting activities and in the community more generally. In addition, the tournament helps to improve the standards of women’s football and is, of course, enormous fun for everyone involved! In addition to the international girls tournament, MYSA organizes female leagues where women footballers have the chance to compete all year round.
This years' tournament will be held from April 6th to 9th at the Nairobi Technical Training Institute fields. Over 80 teams are expected to participate in the tournament which is divided into three age categories; under 13, under 16 and over 16. As extra incentive for the teams, each player from the winning side will be awarded a scholarship worth 10,000 Kenyan Shillings. The scholarships are designed to ensure the continuation of education of the young women and can be used either to pay for school fees or to purchase educational material. The organisation of the tournament is kindly assisted by Streetfootballworld (German), the Stromme Foundation (Norway) and Nike (Netherlands).
Mathare, February 5 - On Monday Mathare Youth head coach Gabriel Njoroge and Mathare United assistant coach Salim Ali start their training at the top Dutch Premier League club Ajax FC. They will start their attachment with the coaching staff of the Ajax U18 team in the Ajax youth programme, the world famous kitchen for cooking many new young football talents.
The two Mathare coaches left last weekend for a 5-month high-level coaching course at the Royal Netherlands Football Association (KNVB) Academy in Zeist, Holland. Also in the course are 19 other coaches and ex-professional players studying to become coaches, including top Dutch women's international goalkeeper Marleen Wissink who has earned a record-setting 141 caps.
Mathare United head coach Francis Kimanzi and MYSA Sports and Community Leadership Academy Director Peter Serry have previously graduated from the same KNVB course and earned their International Coaching Licenses. In addition to leading courses for coaches in MYSA and other clubs in Kenya, Peter and Francis have also served as instructors for KNVB high-level international coaching courses in Mozambique, South Africa, southern Sudan and Zambia.
As part of the expanding joint KNVB-MYSA international "Sport and Development" outreach programmes, Mathare United head coach Francis Kimanzi will lead a football coaches/trainers course to be held in the Western Cape during February 19-24th for over 30 coaches from community-based sport and development projects in South Africa. Next month MYSA Academy Director Peter Serry will lead a similar coaches/trainers course from March 13-18th in Mumbai for community-based sport and development projects in India.
Mathare Youth head coach Gabriel Njoroge and Mathare United assistant coach Salim Ali will return to their respective clubs in June with their International Coaching Licenses and then join Peter Serry and Francis Kimanzi as top instructors in the MYSA Sports and Community Leadership Academy.
Gabriel Njoroge (35) captained Undugu Saints, the winners of the first U16 MYSA Championships in December 1987. Gabriel was on the first MYSA team to go to the Norway Cup international youth tournament in 1990 and returned later to that tournament in the 1990s as the most successful youth coach in MYSA history, helping the MYSA U12 and U13 boys teams win several gold medals. Gabriel was a founding player in 1994 and a top defender on Mathare United until he started coaching Mathare Youth FC in 2002, raising it from the lowest divisions to the top Premier League in just a few years. Gabriel was recently appointed the head coach for the national U23 team.
Salim Ali (30) started playing as a defender for Lucky Strikers FC in MYSA in 1989 and then on the MYSA international U16 youth team which in 1992 won the Eco-Cup during the Earth Summit in Brazil and then toured the Nordic countries and played in the Dana (Denmark), Gothia (Sweden) and Norway Cups. In 1994 Salim was a founding player for Mathare United FC and later served as the club's Assistant Captain and Captain. Salim has coached and refereed MYSA youth teams since 1990 and was appointed the Mathare United assistant coach last year.
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The 16th Videobrasil Festival will be held at SESC Avenida Paulista October 1 through 25. Focusing on the relationship between cinema and contemporary art, the Festival will be preceded by a series of meetings to discuss its curatorial theme. The production of the Festival and of the SESC Videobrasil meetings, and the creation/implementation of a new set of rules for MAM-BA will keep Farkas in transit between São Paulo and the capital of the state of Bahia in 2007. “This constant traveling is ultimately beneficial to both activities, bringing both circuits closer together and accelerating exchange,” she said. Farkas’ first project for MAM-BA—a historical institution located in the complex of colonial buildings ‘Solar do Unhão,’ rediscovered and restored by architect Lina Bo Bardi in the 1960s—aims to devise strategies for facilitating interaction between artists, curators, museologists, educators, technicians, sociologists, musicians, historians, environmentalists, and researchers in other related fields, with the objective of turning the museum into a convergence center for contemporary artistic thinking and practices. Plans for encouraging video production include a residency program for visiting artists.
The work Vue Panoramique, by French-Moroccan artist Bouchra Khalili, is the subject of the last FF>>Dossier in the Outros espaços [Other Spaces] series, curated by Eduardo de Jesus. read more
For a city like Santa Cruz de la Sierra with the population overflow of the past 30 years (a million and a half inhabitants), the number of inhabitants arriving from other regions and cultures of the country and also from neighbouring countries having doubled, artistic activities become a sort of consolation in the face of the difficulties arising from accelerated growth and are helpful in building a sense of belonging and a concept of community life among the recently arrived and the local people.
It is in this context that the Pro-Art and Culture Association (APAC), created by a group of voluntary cultural promoters in 1994, work on the setting up and consolidation of artistic movements, thereby contributing to the achievement of these objectives: a better society and greater inclusion.
The sixth version of the “Santa Cruz de la Sierra” International Theatre Festival, to be held from 19th to 29th April, 2007, aims, like never before, at the growth of the theatre movement initiated in 1996. With the birth of the National Theatre School three years ago in a peripheral district of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, the capital of the department of Santa Cruz, theatre activity has grown and multiplied with local groups acting all year long and there are now great expectations among young people and children regarding this artistic discipline which, previously, was not very dynamic in the department.
It is on account of this that APAC, in this version of the theatre festival, will reach out for the first time to at least ten small and medium-sized towns in the department (with populations of between 3,000 and 100,000 inhabitants) with national and international plays in an attempt to extend opportunities and spread artistic delight among the population.
There will be around 30 international groups from at least 15 countries and some 20 national groups who will tour the varied, extensive geography under the expectant glance of adults, children and young people who, perhaps for the first time in their lives, will see a play live. In the capital city of the department, it will be a complete theatre festival with at least three performances daily, some in the open air and others in the traditional theatres, as well as in the periphery of the city, and there will be workshops on different theatre genres and a seminar on independent theatre and, also, many parallel activities such as, exhibitions, concerts, encounters and meetings of international cultural organizations.
APAC’s more than twelve years of experience has consolidated a successful model for managing and financing these cultural activities. The Bolivian state, through its regional governments, provides at least sixty per cent of the APAC budget which, added to the constant efforts of APAC to obtain aid from international cooperation organizations, from the different embassies accredited in the country, local companies and private individuals, manages to finance all this movement which is constantly being promoted.
APAC, in its efforts to achieve participation, has gradually extended the vision of the community and, in the face of this new challenge, it sets out with the slogan “”Expanding vision” because we believe that only in this way can we completely fulfil our objectives and sustain them in time.
The programming for the VI International Theatre Festival is almost ready. We have the following preliminary numbers: 11 days, 102 shows, 34 groups, 16 countries and 42 stages. Of the 42 stages, 22 are in small towns and 20 in the city of Santa Cruz.
As parallel activities, we will have meetings for the international networks for the Prince Claus Foundation and for the Art and Social Transformation Foundation sponsored by AVINA.
There will also be art galleries and several art workshops. There will be a workshop about “Independent Theatre” with guest directors and actors.
They ably assisted by Odile's students and the Centres director was very amenable to our suggestions for closer relations between the Centre Universitaire des Arts and Martin’s university Murdoch University in Australia;
ZIFF also produced a book on the same Title which was launched at the WSF. The book was given a special mention during the assessment Forum making us all proud. It was funded by the Ford Foundation. Copies will be brought to all network members in April.
FESPACO is the biggest Film Festival in Africa and ZIFF is challenging that! Watch this space!! http://www.fespaco.bf/
had its premiere on January the 23rd at Annemasse, France in front of a full house of 750 enthusiastic people. The premiere was followed by a triumphal France, Amsterdam, Luxembourg tour (in Brest, France the company performed for 2 evenings in front of 1500 people). A spring tour is scheduled in France.
Waxtaan was commissioned by the Prince Claus Fund for the 2005 Awards Ceremony. It was later developed into a full program.
This powerful dance theater piece, which has toured extensively throughout Africa, Europe, the U.S., Asia and Australia, is the passionate response of two choreographers - Senegal’s Germaine Acogny and Japan’s Kota Yamazaki - to genocide. Inspired in part by Murambi, The Book of Bones, writer Boubacar Boris Diop’s fictionalized account of the Rwandan tragedy, Acogny and Yamazaki have created a compelling hybrid of traditional West African dance and theatrical Butoh performed by seven male dancers from Senegal’s masterful Compagnie Jant-Bi.
Acogny, founder and artistic director of Compagnie Jant-Bi, explains the purpose of the piece: “our hopes were that, through the performance, we could make the public aware - in a non-verbal, touching way - of the monstrosities that happened in Rwanda and in all of the genocides since the dawn of time and to help prevent this violence from occurring again…knowing of course that this could only be like a drop of water in the sea, but nevertheless, one has to start somewhere and even a drop makes ripples.”
Yamazaki, whose work is based in Butoh - a performance art that originated in post-World War II Japan -explains that his choreographic approach was to find a connection between the genocide of Rwanda, Butoh and African dance, “dancing - and the body - have the power of going beyond nationalities, and of immediately destroying barriers between individuals.”
GuestRoom is a series of presentations in Museum “Het Domein” in the town of Sittard, in the center-south of The Netherlands. In each Guest Room, art institutions are given an opportunity to present themselves in original ways. The Prince Claus Fund is hosting GuestRoom #5. read more
Premiere of Bintou Were, a Sahel Opera
Mathare coaches train with Ajax in Holland
Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York
Work by Lida Abdul at CER Presentation
Robert Loder, Triangle Arts Trust, London, UK robert@gasbag.org
Alessio Antoniolli, Triangle Arts Trust, UK alessio@gasbag.org
Solange Farkas, Videobrasil, Sao Paulo, Brazil solangefarkas@videobrasil.org.br
Helmut Vogt, Jant-Bi, Dakar, Senegal jant-bi@sentoo.sn
Martin Mhando, ZIFF, Zanzibar, Tanzania martin.mhando@ziff.or.tz
Nirwan Dewanto, Utan Kayu, Jakarta, Indonesia nirnd@indosat.net.id
Shahidul Alam, Drik, Dhaka, Bangladesh shahidul@drik.net
Cecilia Kenning, APAC, Santa Cruz, Bolivia info@festivalesapac.com
Bob Munroe, MYSA, Nairobi, Kenya munro@kenyaweb.com
Peter Karanja, MYSA, Nairobi, Kenya pkaranja@mysakenya.org
Felix Madrazo, Supersudaca, Rotterdam, Netherlands felixmadrazo@supersudaca.org
Daravuth Ly, Reyum, Phnom Penh, Cambodia lydaravuth@yahoo.com
Odile Gakire Katese, University Center for Arts and Drama, Butare, Rwanda cua_centre@yahoo.fr
Peter Stepan, Prince Claus Fund Library, Munich, Germany peter.interculture@googlemail.com
Els van der Plas, Prince Claus Fund, The Hague, Netherlands, e.vanderplas@princeclausfund.nl
Joumana El Zein Khoury, Prince Claus Fund, The Hague, Netherlands, j.elzein@princeclausfund.nl