Translated by Ben Dhaou Nejiba)- Coming from a variety of backgrounds, students, future graduates, autodidacts and unemployed graduates, they all have ideas for artistic and cultural content.
Selected following a call for applications, they have been meeting since December 16, 2023 for the Créathon TACIR-Tunis #01, as part of the TACIR (Talents-Arts-Creativity-Inclusion-Research) programme run by the Amavi Association and supported by the Swiss Embassy in Tunisia, the French Embassy in Tunis, the French Institute of Tunisia (IFT) and the Maghroum’in project.
The Association Art Rue Dar Bach Hamba seat in the medina of Tunis has been transformed since Saturday into a real beehive where young people living in the Greater Tunis region (Tunis, Ariana, Ben Arous and Manouba governorates) have been presenting, shaping and refining their ideas for cultural and creative projects (ICC), as part of a design thinking and mind mapping workshop led by mentors.
After this three-day marathon of professional and technica
l support, the participants will pitch their various productions (video vignettes presenting a local identity story, an immersive experience, a documentary, a video game, or web or mobile content, etc.) on December 18, to a jury of experts who will evaluate and select the most promising projects for inclusion in the two key pre-incubation components, ‘Tacir Innov’ and ‘Tacir-Créa’, where innovation, passion and talent are the watchwords.
Speaking about this programme, founder of the multimedia and audiovisual association AMAVI and head of TACIR Chiraz Laatiri explained in an interview with TAP that the central idea of this programme is social inclusion and professional insertion to ensure more equitable access to creativity and culture for marginalised regions, based on the conviction that it is imperative to consider culture as an economy and not as mere entertainment.
That’s why this programme is structured around several components, including Tacir Crea and Tacir Innov, with the joint goal of supporting
projects from idea to development by offering incubation to help young people create their own start-ups to become entrepreneurs, or develop their own creative products to become authors (video films, virtual reality experiences, etc.).
The programme, which has just kicked off in Greater Tunis, focusing on marginalised neighbourhoods, is run in collaboration with the Mouvma collective in Raoued and Mass’art, which centres on local culture.
It will be rolled out in 11 other regions by 2026. After Greater Tunis, the programme will make a stopover in January 2024 in Zaghouan with the Ennadhour cultural association, before moving on to Redeyef, Gafsa, Gabes, Kébili, Béja, etc., where each region will have a partner association piloting the project.
Launched last April in Kef as part of an experiment with the Cirta Cultural Centre and the Cultural Centre for Arts and Crafts (CCAM) in Semmama (Kasserine), this programme has shown through its many residencies and workshops that the country is brimming with plural
talent, in the image of a plural Tunisia, which is where the challenge and the DNA of this programme lie: Reducing disparities in access to culture by giving young people the chance to tell their own stories, without the intervention of anyone else in the implementation of this programme, which is financed as part of bilateral cooperation, she pointed out, regretting the lack of Tunisian contributions and sponsorship.
In addition to training and support, the research element is also present, with the launch of a sociological study on the cultural economy and the precarious situation in relation to access to culture, with the contribution of a team of researchers, historians, psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists, to name but a few: Kmar Bendana, Imed Melliti, Rim Ben Ismail, Kaouther Graidia, Zouheir Ben Jannet, etc.
Once it is ready, the study is intended, she pointed out, as a means of showing the impact of this programme, which deploys a synergy between training, creation, innovation, dissemina
tion and research, on cultural orientations, especially in this age of the image which “surpasses and overtakes us and which deserves more supervision, more legislation by pondering, for example, a kind of Ai Act in Tunisia on the use of artificial intelligence in relation to creativity, its threats and/or its opportunities.”
Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse