Art residency in Sulaymanhya with Walking Arts NGO

Five intense days of musical residency in the Community of Der al Maryam Adhra in Sulaymanhya in Iraqi Kurdistan were the new stage of the path opened by Walking Arts - Art, Culture & Heritageto make youth protagonism grow through artistic languages ​​in Iraq .

More than thirty young musicians and musicians from various parts of Iraq found themselves among the welcoming spaces made available by the Community, which represents, in connection with the Monastery in Syria, founded by Padre Dall’Olio, a lively and important point of cultural and inter-religious exchange in Iraq.

Purpose of the five days of the artistic residency: to create the new CD of the Ensemble Mshakht and a docufilm dedicated to Walking Arts, Art, Culture & Heritage NGO and at the same time to learn how to best use audio and video techniques, thanks to the presence of international experts such as Francesco Fabiano, sound engineer and Valeria Fabris, director.

In jargon, what has been done is called learnig by doing.
The five days were also much more: not just playing together, composing, recording, filming with cameras but doing it in a collective, convivial way, in a constant relationship between Iraq and the artistic realities of Padua.
Of course, to create valid artistic products you need to know how to handle the techniques, in this case audio and video, but to create through artistic languages ​​you also need sharing. Acting as a jem session where the particularity of the individual is enhanced in the relationship with the other, where being different is a wealth, where difference does not create barriers but stimulates knowledge.
The residency has been prepared in recent months by the constant relationship between the different local groups that innervate Walking Arts and between Iraq and Padua.

Residenza artistica a Sulaymanhya con Walking Arts

With Francesco Fabiano young Iraqis have never stopped meeting online starting from the first workshop on sound techniques done last November. From this exchange and acquisition of knowledge was born the recording studio that operates in the Duhok Gallery and the preparation of the audio part of the Artistic Coworking always open in the town of Iraqi Kurdistan.
With the residency we have taken a step further, with the physical presence of Francis in Iraq and the online connections with the equipped studios in Padua, the young Iraqis were able to learn cutting-edge techniques for recording musical pieces, who will compose their new CD, to which the Paduan musicians of New Landscape will also collaborate.

Residenza artistica a Sulaymanhya con Walking Arts

The same relationship path that he built with the director Valeria Fabris. After the first mission in Iraq last February Valeria Fabris continued to work in a shared way with the young Babylon Production videomakers and her collaborators in Italy, to shoot the docufilm dedicated to Walking Arts which continued during the residency.
Exchange, provision of knowledge, common growth are the aspects that are characterizing something that goes beyond simple training, the simple teaching of audio and video techniques.
These are the ingredients that will also be used in the post-production of the CD and the docufilm that will be made available internationally packaged in a multimedia box.

Sharing and the common path are marking the entire Walking Art experience and make the NGO, born from the bet to enhance artistic languages ​​as an instrument of social cohesion, a sort of artistic community on the move.

A community made up of many Iraqi boys and girls together with artists from a distant city Padua, but close for the bond that has been created, starting from the commitment of the Master Luca Chiavinato.

An artistic community which has a home in Coworking in Duhok, which lives in the many Walking poles in various locations, from Iraqi Kurdistan to the Nineveh Plain, from Baghdad to Basra.
An artistic community in which individuals from different ethnic backgrounds of the Iraqi mosaic find space and freedom, in which young women find themselves at ease, who in the Iraqi context struggle not a little to decide their own destiny.
An artistic community which does not close itself within the confines of governorates or enclaves blocked by militias, but which crosses borders reaching the squares of Padua and beyond.

Residenza artistica a Sulaymanhya con Walking Arts

Learn new techniques and use them together to communicate freedom and rights with art.

It is no coincidence that the training course in audio and video techniques that took place during the artistic residency within the Projects Here Now Together with the contribution of the FAI and Art in action with the contribution of CCFD, were followed by the Course in music therapy carried out with the Artistic Works with the contribution of the Otto per mille of the Waldensian Church.
Projects different but animated by a common thread that of allowing Walking Arts NGO to strengthen itself to build the possibility for young Iraqi artists to create another Iraq through art, of rights and freedoms for everyone and everyone.

Residenza artistica a Sulaymanhya con Walking Arts

The participated live concert at the Der al Maryam Adhra Community, which concluded the artistic residence, among sounds, songs and dances, showed, once again, how much is the desire to be together in this distant piece of the world , beyond any difference and diversity.

A lot of progress has been made since the beginning of Walking Arts and many ideas are in the pipeline. A path that is making itself known throughout Iraq, becoming both a point of reference and a stimulus for other young people, as demonstrated by television service curated by Waar Media and the countless initiatives in which young artists are invited to participate.

Project Here, now, together with the contribution of the Fondation Assistance Internationale - FAI curated by Walking Arts NGO - Art, Culture & Heritage and Ya Basta Caminantes Association ODV