“The common element connecting art and politics is that they are both phenomena of the public world.”. That is, to have an interest in art in a political way is to be someone “who knows how to choose his company among men, among things, among thoughts, in the present as well as in the past.” (Hannah Arendt).
Tae’thir is the result of a long-term collaboration between Instants Vidéo, Euromed France Network (REF), Liguede l’Enseignement 13and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS).
THE PROJECT
This project comes at a time when human rights are being eroded and freedom of expression and creation is being increasingly curtailed in many countries around the Mediterranean. We felt there was an urgent need to explore the intersections between art and content creation on the one hand, and human rights (HR) on the other.
How do young people address human rights issues? What new alliances and new spaces for encounter and dialogue can be imagined?
Social networks, a public space? Art at the heart of everyday life?
These are just some of the questions that will be discussed with the participants, the advisory board and the consortium teams throughout the project.
The project will run for 3 years, from September 2023 to June 2026. During the first two years, 41 young people from 17 countries around the Mediterranean will be supported. (2023/24 then 2024/25). In the third year (2026), a public event will be held in Marseille.
PROJECT BENEFICIARIES
The young artists and content creators involved in the project, aged between 21 and 35, come from :
- About 70% from: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey.
- About 30% from: Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta Portugal and Spain.
PROJECT WORKS COMPONENTS
We structured the project around a cycle of activities divided into 5 areas:
- online training on Human Rights based on 3 concepts: censorship / patriarchy / criticism
- a one-week training course in Marseille, opening the way for exchanges and meetings between peers and with local players (October 2024 & June 2025)
- individual support (mentoring)
- financial support for 24 artistic and digital content projects
- participatory research examining the alliances between art & content creation / human rights / politics
An advisory committee has been set up to support the consortium. It brings to the project very specific expertise in issues relating to human rights, gender, art and culture, and digital spheres of influence.
A final event in Marseille designed as a web of possibilities, a universe of encounters and discoveries where a diversity of people meet, talk, exchange and compare their views on the issue of HR, approached through the prism of art and internet content and dealt with in different ways. The creations produced over the previous 2 years are presented in space, the participants’ experiences are shared and analysed, and a specific time is set aside for presenting the results of the research into the links between HD and artistic creation. The partners involved throughout the project, the Advisory Board and local institutions will be invited to take part in the debates that will mark these 3 days of meetings around HR. Particular attention will be paid to mobilising secondary schools (one of Ligue de l’Enseignement’s priority targets in terms of ECSI). Young people from Marseilles, local authorities, the region’s associative and artistic players, and players from the world of research (mainly the University of Aix Marseille and iReMMO) will also be targeted. At the same time, public presentations of digital works and productions will be organised in Marseille (Les Instants Vidéo Festival in October 2025) and in several Mediterranean countries.
We will also be organising regular webinars to enable the project’s stakeholders and the Mediterranean cooperation sector (cultural operators, associations, institutions, etc.) to share their analyses of the issues at the heart of Tae’thir, and to open the way to new collaborations.
OCTOBER, 2024 IN MARSEILLE
The 20 participants of the first cycle will be welcomed to Marseille in October 2024 for a one-week poetic stay based on the title question of Les Instants Vidéo Festival: Because how do human live?
A 2-day immersion in the heart of the Festival will offer a panorama of international creation (200 artists, 50 countries) and encourage artistic encounters.
Participants will also have the opportunity to meet artists and cultural professionals, public authorities and local inhabitants, especially young people. A public meeting will also be organised.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF THE PROJECT
The Tae’thir project is the continuation of a long-standing reflection on the evolution of new forms of human rights (HR) mobilisation and advocacy in the Mediterranean. Our consortium have been working for years on issues linked to the defense of human rights, the promotion of active citizenship and access to art and culture for all.
Between 2015 and 2017, REF, ICEDH, IV and Ligue 13 have already collaborated to organize 3 peer-to-peer exchange, capacity-building and networking courses for young activists in Libya ( Internship 1: Media and citizenship – 2015; Internship 2: Civil society, citizenship and social change – 2016; Internship 3: Cultural rights, fundamental rights – 2017). These 3 internships provided support for young Libyan filmmakers and led to the production of 8 short films on human rights issues in Libya (internally displaced persons, violence against women, freedom of expression, migrants’ rights, intercommunity dialogue, etc.). These films have been screened at various cultural events in Marseille, Paris, Tunis, Palermo and New York.
More recently, from 2020 to 2022, our organizations jointly supported a capacity-building project for young HR defenders in the MENA region, called Tamkeen: 40 young people supported in their commitment journey, from Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. This project involved organizing 2 internships in Marseille (2021 and 2022), conducting a mentoring and sub-granting process to support the young interns’ projects, and running online training sessions on HR.
The project’s closing event was organized on December 10, 2022, International Human Rights Day, at the Institut français de Tunisie, with a public debate giving young people a voice on the human rights situation in the MENA region.
PARTNERS
FINANCED BY
