Uncategorized - L'ALTRE FESTIVAL

How can arts and culture address the multiple expressions of troubled young minds when facing the crises of our time? That was one of the questions of the Brainstorming Report “Youth, Mental Health and Culture” which is now available on the website of Voices of Culture. This report explores the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being. L’Altre Festival, one of the member of the project “Festivals, Art Therapy and Young People “FEARTY”, had the opportunity to work and to participate on the report’s creation.

FEARTY is a project funded by Erasmus+ program and this year it continues working on the strategies to arrive to young people through arts and art therapy, in order to promote wellbeing and prevent mental health problems.

We would like to present you ART4MORE festival. It is an innovative International Festival, dedicated to contemporary art, Mental Health and public awareness around social issues in Athens, Greece. It is carried out annually by K.S.D.E.O. “EDRA” on the occasion of World Mental Health Day (October 10). ART4MORE is aimed at the general public, in an effort to inform / raise awareness to combat the stigma and discrimination that accompanies Mental Health conditions, as well as Mental Health professionals, mentally ill & professional artists and Mental Health agencies.

The festival brings together contemporary international works from the fields of visual arts, music, cinema, architecture, theatre, dance, new media and design. Exhibitions, Workshops for Children & Adults, Screenings, Discussions, Events, Music Concerts, etc.

We had the opportunity to participate on it this year as a member of FE-ARTY project. We participated on an open discussion and experiential game together with ISPS Italy, EDRA and Safe Space – Festival Mental.

The project “Festival, Art Therapy and Youth – FEARTY” presents the variety of forms of art therapy carried out with the participation of young people, in order to promote and popularize this discipline, to encourage young people to quickly take up prevention & treatment for mental illnesses.

Meanwhile you are unpacking your summer suitcase, we are starting to pack it to start a trip around Europe in the last quarter. To meet, learn and share ideas about culture, mental health, art therapy and youth. Here is our itinerary. Let’s see if we meet you on the road.

1st stop: PERUGIA (Italy) within the framework of the European project FEARTY as one of the partner entities to get to know the festival of the coordinating entity ISPS Italy – from August 31 to September 4.
2nd stop: BRUSSELS (Belgium) in collaboration with Voices of Culture. A meeting with 53 cultural entities by speaking about culture, mental health and youth – from October 4 to 5.
3rd stop: ATHENS (Greece) to get to know the EDRA entity and its Art4more festival, one of the partner entities of the FEARTY project from October 13 to 17.
4th stop: BRUSSELS (Belgium) We return to close the conversations with Voices of Culture on December 8.

“My name is mandla. It means power. I gave it to myself.”

Writer and performer mandla rae has a selective memory and is scrambling to piece together a life mostly forgotten in the name of survival. Through the exploration of mandla’s fragmented asylum and migration memories, as british as a watermelon asks questions about belonging, trauma and forgiveness.

Told through an unflinching autofiction narrative weaving poetry and storytelling, set within a chaotically colourful, sensory performance space made entirely for the camera with filmmaker Graham Clayton-Chance; you are invited to watch as mandla rises from the dead to reclaim a misplaced power.

mandla rae is a queer Zimbabwean writer, performer and curator. mandla is agender and has no pronouns. mandla’s work typically explores an intersectional existence enforced on the artists’ body as a result of the world we live in. mandla has been commissioned by many organisations across the country including the BFI, Journeys Festival International and Hope Mill Theatre to make written works. mandla is an Associate Artist for Outbox Theatre.

A show by Berta Giraut and the company Teatro de Pacotilla

A show starring characters freed from the imperatives of reason, who invite you to dance, share visions, music and surrealist poetry with the background warning of the end of the world.

In the post-pandemic world, mental health management is a social issue that should be of the first order. Due to interest in demonstrating this need, the Barcelona Poesia, the Centre for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona – within the exhibition “Francesc Tosquelles. As a sewing machine in a wheat field” –, L’Altre International Festival of Performing Arts and Mental Health and the Foundation Els Tres Turons have teamed up to offer a show in which, under the direction and guidance of Berta Giraut, the actors and actresses of the company Teatro de Pacotilla explore poetry, music, theatre and cabaret.

El club de res de res is the club par excellence: we do not come to do anything concrete, we only hang out with others at a place where we are sure to find them. This is what Ginette Michaud says, and we take the floor to recreate a space where all kinds of characters arrive without any apparent reason. Characters who want to empty the crop, dance, share visions, die, do poetic actions. El club de res de res is a clandestine place with accordion and clarinet music, vedets, philosophers, right-wing lords, gays, women who have decided never to love again, romantics and soothsayers. All of them will live in this isolated space where they will make love and war with the background warning of the end of the world that will be handed by a prophet. El club de res de res opens its doors and invites you in to transform its free dance into a collective experience.” (Berta Giraut, poet and actress)

The show will be performed on May 15 at the CCCB in the framework of the Barcelona Poetry festival, and will be performed again on June 11 at L’Altre Festival.

Directors: Berta Giraut Junoy

Since its first edition, l’Altre Festival has awarded the Josep Clusa Award in recognition of those shows, projects or companies that stand out in the field of Performing Arts and Mental Health. In the different editions, several aspects of the Performing Arts have been awarded: the most inclusive stage project (2015), the best show selected by a jury (2017) or the show best valued by the public (2019).

This year, the Josep Clusa Award wants to recognize that Performing Arts Company whose goal, present or future, is one of the aspects that make up the soul of l’Altre Festival, And the winners are: Cia Amèrica and Companyia de Teatre Comunitari La Colla.

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Youth, Mental Health and Culture

ART4MORE festival

L’Altre discovering Europe

as british as watermelon

El club de res de res

A show by Berta Giraut and the company Teatro de Pacotilla

Josep Clusa Award

Youth, Mental Health and Culture

II. Jornada de les Taules de Salut Mental de Barcelona

II. Jornada de las Mesas de trabajo de la Salud Mental de Barcelona