News

The production of the video documentary and the theatrical show, two of the main tools for raising awareness of the AwArtMali project, is in full swing.
Through the production of a documentary video, the TAMA 365 campaign will narrate the migration through voices and images: lived stories, tales of those who have already embarked on the journey, what are the steps, the difficulties, the sufferings, the dreams they have. But also a way to tell positively how it is possible to undertake real integration paths and find opportunities to grow, or acquire skills and competences that can be spent in a dignified and safe life project in own country.

The material collected represents, at the same time, the basis on which another
fundamental tool of the awareness campaign will be built: an itinerant theatrical show that, moving from city to city and from village to village, will help to achieve the objectives of the project and to reach people more directly and effectively. A theatrical show in which the public can recognize themselves, feel involved and interact in order to create an exchange of information regarding the different possibilities existing in the migratory field. A “Pan-African” theatrical caravan will be built, composed by Malian and not only actors, musicians and also educators, whose task will be to capture the attention of the population by creating channels of communication through artistic language, the universal language par excellence. For the design of both (video and the show) was used the collection of interviews between the people of Mali and those gathered in Europe.
From 9 to 16 June 2019, 40 interviews and 4 interventions in 4 schools in the
municipalities of Dio-Gare, Diago, Kambila, Yelekebougou were carried out by Maurizio Schmidt, Luca Fusi, Ildevert Meda with the mediation of the animation team of the local NGO Le Tonus. The sample interviewed was made up of potential migrants, returning migrants (from other African countries or from Spain and Italy), griots, village heads, school heads, teachers and students from secondary schools.
From 28 July to 4 August the project partner Farneto Teatro has instead moved to Spain, in particular to Albacete, Madrid, Recas, Valencia, Mataro and, starting from the collaboration with the Alto Consejo de la Diaspora Maliana (Haute Conseildes Maliens à l’Exterieur), and has conducted 28 interviews with resident migrants or seasonal workers.

During the summer of 2019, interviews were also conducted in Italy that will continue until March 2020. Thanks to the Malian High Council in Italy, 20 young people who arrived in Italy for 1 or 2 years were interviewed in Sardinia, others in Bologna and Padua. Five workers of Malian origin from Fincantieri in Trieste, guests and operators from the Community of Sant Egidio in Milan and operators from the Patronato San Vincenzo of Bergamo were interviewed. Also in Milan, Pierfrancesco Majorino was interviewed and Pietro Bartolo (former doctor of the First Reception Center in Lampedusa) both currently MEPs, will soon be interviewed. Another round of interviews was made to the staff of the
rescue ship Mare Jonio, in particular to the volunteers, the legal team, the rescue team and the first officer. In March, in anticipation of an important resumption of landings on Italian coasts, interviews will take place in Lampedusa, on the ships of NGOs that provide relief at sea and to the Italian Navy.

The interviews carried out have been made available to the theater work team in Burkina Faso which from November 24 to December 20 (2019) organized a first period of test of the show at the Gambidi Space in Ouagadougou with the collaboration of the manager of the space, Bamako’s Maaya theater group directed by Gaoussou Yah Touré, playwright Ildevert Meda and director Luca Fusi.

The show will be built to allow space for improvisation and discussion on the topic of migration. From 20 to 25 January 2020 the theater show will be presented in Ouagadougou and from January 25 to February 28 there will be in tour in Mali. The goal is to make three reruns in the theaters in Bamako, two in the Bamako suburbs, one in Kati and fourteen reruns in the villages around Kati. Finally, between March and May 2020, the editing of the video-documentary will be concluded and will be presented at the end of the AwArtMali project.