Meeting, Culture, Art | 28-29-30 July 2017
Mama Africa Meeting (MAM) is an international festival dedicated to intercultural encounters that take place during the summer of the outstanding natural surroundings of the Lunigiana valley (Tuscany – Italy). The event functions as a laboratory intent on countering racism or any other form of discrimination, in a location where peaceful co-existence and collaboration are experienced in a tangible way. During the festival, people of different origin meet and communicate through music, dance and storytelling, as well as through visual, popular and collective art forms.
Founded in 2005, the Mama Africa Meeting has become one of the most important European festivals dedicated predominantly to the culture and art of West Africa. A participating community – over 700 adults, youths and children, from over fifteen countries both within and outside of Europe, comes together to share this incomparable social and artistic experience.
In 2016, it has been necessary to take a short pause to re-evaluate the objectives of Mama Africa.
We are now ready to start a new, initially by offering a three-day-long collective laboratory: Mama Africa “RELOADED”.
The MAM that everyone knew was a week of intensive study – of music, dance and song (particularly from Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Senegal). It was an event where one could experience the arts, including their youthful and urban expressions, from another part of the planet. It was a meeting point for the passionate and the curious where one could study with some of the most accomplished artists in the world, as well as an opportunity for these artists to meet again.
The last edition of the festival, in 2015, included no less than12 locations with courses running simultaneously throughout the day: overall more that 160 courses, 800 hours of lessons and the involvement of over 80 artists.
MAM offers an opportunity to investigate in depth subjects that focus on social, cultural and political themes. These are addressed from an intercultural point of view, attempting to compare and contrast the views of different groups attending the Meeting (artists, volunteers, people taking the courses and the general public), working towards identifying critical issues and contradictions while stimulating reflection and individual awareness.
A village within a village, where children from 3 to 15 years of age find a space of their own, free to interact and overcome the barriers of language, origin and nationality. A space where they can relate to everything happening inside the MAM. Games, storytelling, playing music together, dance, acrobatics, instrument making using recycled materials, painting, decoration and evening events dedicated to the youngest: a varied program rich in activities that also involves the participation of many instructors and participants from the courses.
The Benteremà Village provides a space for creativity, but it also facilitates exchanges with the children (and also with their parents and accompanying adults) with the aim of transmitting the deeper message of the Mama Africa Meeting to its youngest participants.
Concerts at the MAM spread their good vibrations every evening, with music that’s never banal. The best of African tradition, fusion and experimentation – an experience that shouldn’t be missed!
MAM is only possible thanks to the tremendous efforts of its volunteers, who carry out almost all of the tasks associated with running a festival. It’s all done with a mix of enthusiasm, responsibility and awareness. The relationships formed, whether swinging pots and pans or using pens and computers, are often ones that continue long after the festival has ended for the year.
Over the years, Mama Africa Meeting has developed a strong environmental consciousness. Bottled water is not sold on the festival site. Instead, filtered and refrigerated tap water is freely available to everyone. Containers for differentiated waste collection are set up around the site.
Glass and organic waste are separated and recycled. Kitchens, bars and restaurants make exclusive use of products in Mater-bi, a wholly biodegradable material. In this way, plastic waste is reduced to an insignificant amount. All of the products in the three bars come from Fair Trade sources. Biodegradable bags and soap are distributed to help minimize the impact of thousands of visitors to the park and surrounding area.
Mama Africa Meeting is also a place of flavors and scents, both from our own country and from faraway places. At Mama Africa even the food becomes a vehicle for exchange and encounter, an opportunity to discover new flavors and recipes and to invent fusion food!
The 2017 Mama Africa Meeting will be a special version of our festival. Thanks to your participation, it will be an edition born of the present fundraising efforts and will allow us once again to launch a week-long Mama Africa in 2018.
We’ll meet at the end of July for three days of courses, music and encounters, as usual, but above all to discuss and agree on the contents and the form of organization of future Meetings.
The Association “MAMA AFRICA MEETING, INCONTRO E CULTURA” wants to enlarge the participation in the MAMA AFRICA MEETING. We are asking all of you – VOLUNTEERS, ARTISTS, COURSE ATTENDEES AND GUESTS – to meet to express your ideas, listen to the ideas of other people and in doing so achieve the goals of the Meeting together.
The music and the dance, the theater, the visual arts, the storytelling, the literature and the cuisine – what do they mean for us? How, by using them, can we end racism and the rejection of diversity? How can we help to construct a better society, peaceful and welcoming?
During these three days, space and time will be available so that everyone is able to get together and discuss these themes.
Lunigiana (Tuscany/Italy) takes its name from the Roman colony of Luni, founded in 177 BCE, which was so rich in dazzling marbles that it led the Vikings to mistake it for Rome. Lunigiana is located between Tuscany and Liguria, both regions characterized by their age-old agrarian landscapes and by the friendliness of their inhabitants. A small area, rich in history, that presents itself in a true kaleidoscope of light, colours and images, enhanced by the greenness of the scenery with the backdrop of the lofty serrated peaks of the Apuan Alps and the vast meadows of the high Apennines.
Mama Africa Meeting, in its traditional week-long version, is capable of financing itself, but in order to re-launch the festival with a greater number of participating organizations, it is necessary to begin with a 3-day edition to allow us to raise and put aside funds for next year’s festival.
To accomplish this, apart from the contribution of the instructors, who on this occasion will offer their talents for free, and the work of the many volunteers, we also need the support of all of you to cover the expenses connected with organizing the event.
Furthermore…
If we reach 15000€, we will be able to:
If we raise the amount of 20000€, we could:
And if we reach 25000€ (this is the amount we actually need in order to make the festival economically secure) we could:
The money will be, therefore, used to organize the 2017 Special Edition that will allow us to raise and put aside funds for next year’s festival in its traditional week-long version, with dozens of courses, many more activities for children and several occasions to be together, know each other, have fun, learn and change.
T-Shirt Mama Africa Meeting “Reloaded” – Limited Edition
T-Shirt Mama Africa Meeting “Official”
Mama Africa Meeting Brooch and Sticker
Cocoa butter natural stick
Cd “The dream of Icarus”
Pendant Africa Tangram by Vittoria Pettini
Mama Africa Meeting Water Bottle
Free Pass for 3h of dance / music / singing / teather
Free Pass 1 day of dance / music / singing / teather
Free Pass Festival of dance / music / singing / teather
The Association “MAMA AFRICA MEETING, INCONTRO E CULTURA” has been established this year. It includes most of the individuals and organizations that have worked to build up MAM throughout its ten previous editions.
In years past, MAM was promoted by the ARCI association. However, the rapid growth during the last three years made it necessary to define more clearly the content and the objectives of the festival. This has led to the decision to create an independent association dedicated to MAM that allows more autonomy and a better control of the organization.
It has taken a year’s time to figure out and restructure the organization. Now we are able to start with this special festival edition, “RELOADED”. It will take place over three days, from the 28th to the 30th of July, at the usual location – the area of “Il Nido” in Villafranca, Lunigiana, in the province of Massa-Carrara.