At the heart of the arts, stories, encounters, and the multiple ways of inhabiting cities, the festival proposes five days of dialogue, mobility, and creation in different cultural spaces of both cities, exchanging knowledge and celebrating arts and cultures.
This week is dedicated to the City in Hands Festival, a multidisciplinary event organized by Catalogus and the Spanish Embassy, with the aim of promoting culture, artistic expression, dialogue, exhibitions, and other forms of expression and thought that reflect the different ways of experiencing cities.
Focusing on the arts, stories, encounters, and the multiple ways of inhabiting cities, the festival proposes five days of dialogue, mobility, and creation in different cultural spaces in both cities, exchanging knowledge and celebrating arts and cultures.
Among guests from Mozambique and Spain, the festival will bring together writers, visual artists, photographers, musicians, actors, poets, and cultural agents, providing an environment of cultural diversity, learning, and cultural exchange.
"City in Hands" will occupy various cultural spaces between the two neighboring cities, Maputo and Matola, namely the Guimarães Rosa Institute (IGR), Gallery, Ntsindya - Municipal Cultural Center, Camões – Portuguese Cultural Center in Maputo, Monument and Interpretation Center of Matola, Auditorium of the headquarters building of the Municipal Council of the City of Matola, Business Lounge by Nedbank, Faculty of Engineering and Technologies (FET) of the Pedagogical University of Maputo.
Among the confirmed names for this edition are the environmentalist Carlos Serra, the poet Énia Lipanga, the singer Elvira Viegas, the photographer and designer Adelium Castelo, the writer Helder Faife, the visual artists Gonçalo Mabunda and Carina Captine, and the cultural managers Ivan Laranjeira (Mafalala Museum) and Jorge Matine (Chapa 100). Other guests include the journalists Elton Pila, José dos Remédios, and Ouri Pota.
The scheduled activities include meetings, lectures, and debates on cultural spaces, artistic work in the city, climate, technologies, and inhabited urban spaces; a photographic exhibition, book fair, guided tours of historical and cultural heritage, and performances.
The performance “Transit: Maputo - Madrid - Matola,” directed by Angelina Chavango, will translate the concept of transit, one of the pillars of this edition, into bodily movements. The dialogues “Poetry is born in the suburbs and rises to the city,” “Suburbs: gravitating around the city,” “Cultural spaces - city and periphery,” and “The art of creating and sharing sound stories,” and the dialogues on “the future of cities” in these times of technological acceleration while climate challenges prevail, are some of the proposals that aim to intertwine links between cities, creativity, and humanity.
From Spain will come cultural manager Marta García Moreno and sound designer Álex García Amat, who will lead a workshop on producing cultural content through audio, aimed at creatives and people interested in expanding their narratives with social impact through sound.
More than a cultural event, the City in Hands Festival is an invitation to recreation. A space where art, culture, and debates meet and strengthen ties between artists, institutions, and communities.
(By Catalogus)
