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Discovering and (re-)claiming public space through art
Overview
The Dream City Festival is held in the Medina and downtown Tunis bringing together artists from Tunisia, the MENA-region, Africa and Europe, the event creates a unique melting pot of artwork and visions of urban futures. Over time, the festival became an important part of Tunis cultural life and an interesting element in urban development.
Background
Created in 2007, Dream City is a multidisciplinary art festival in the city of Tunis, held for 10 days in the historic city center, the Medina, and downtown Tunis. The festival does not only (re-)claim public space but also addresses social and political questions through art. The association L’Art Rue works closely with the City of Tunis, state actors, and the civil society to organize the art festival.
Objectives
The festival searches to stimulate exchanges between artists, their artwork and the city and its people. Through the event, citizens (re-)discover and (re-)connect with their city and public spaces.
Through the performances, exhibitions, workshops, conferences, concerts, and theatre the city’s public space is also perceived as a creative space for innovative work creating visions for the city’s future. Dream City searches to link urban, social, and artistic processes in the long term.
Through significant periods of creation that could reach up to years, the artists who are invited to Dream City are accompanied by L'Art Rue to meet and converse with experts from the territory, associations, institutions, and citizens. These encounters and exchanges respond to the desires of artists to create in the context of a specific political, economic, social theme that also responds to the questions of the territory.
Activities
The Dream City Festival 2022 was held in the Medina and downtown Tunis for the sixth time.
Bringing together artists from Tunisia, the MENA-region, Africa and Europe, the event creates a unique melting pot of artwork and visions of urban futures. Dream City is first and foremost a festival of creations, where artworks are born as a result to the encounter with the inhabitants of the medina of Tunis and its outskirts. The final artworks are showcased in both open and enclosed venues of the city, unconventional they may be, yet they are filled with so much life and memory.
Effects
Over time, the festival became an important part of Tunis cultural life. With over 19 000 participants during the 2022 edition, the Medina becomes a cultural hot spot during the event, allowing visitors from Tunisia and abroad to experience ‘their’ Medina in a different light.
Dream City has not only had an impact on the Medina itself but brought together actors from culture, civil society as well as municipalities. Dream City engages the various institutional and civil society actors of the territory through the elaboration of works and venues in which they are shown to the audiences during the festival.
The authorizations, the provision of spaces and venues, the collaboration for the creation of certain artworks are all opportunities initiated by L'Art Rue for encounters, discussions, and uniting the different actors of the city around art and the vector of cultural action.
Conclusions
The Dream City Festival was held in the Medina and downtown Tunis (2007, 2010, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2022) also in Sfax, Tunisia (2012), Marseille, France (Marseille-Provence Euro-Mediterranean Capital of Culture - 2013) and London, GB (Shubbak Festival - 2017).
Images
Categories:
Integrated urban development
Public space
The social city
Regions:
Africa
Tunesien
Tunis
