Last Sunday’s inaugural community Arts fair, Ribeira das artes, was a great success. Throngs of people attended, and there were very favorable reviews of it in the local newspapers. A more complete description of the event will be posted here in the next couple of days, but in the meantime, here is a little sample.
(The bottom two photos show new works by Julio Costa.)
After all the plans and preparations, the day of the inaugural arts fair has arrived. Although this kickoff event is an important milestone for the ICBIE, it will hopefully mark a turning point for Ribeira, too. As part of the cidade baixa, Ribeira is totally lacking in cultural opportunities. There is no cinema, no theater and (with the exception of the ICBIE) no social center, and as a result, the Ribeira of the Arts festival is the first initiative that gives the district a stable and on-going cultural venue, offering events for the entire population.
The Ribeira district was first developed a century ago, as a holiday getaway for the patricians of Salvador, who built beautiful houses where they could escape the heat and crowds of the city, to enjoy the constant fresh sea breezes. Located five miles directly north of the city center, Ribeira is situated on a narrow peninsula that juts into the Bay of All Saints, with one side facing toward Bomfin and the open Atlantic, while the other side faces onto the narrow bay that ends at the Alagados, and that side was developed as a fisherman’s port.
During the twentieth century, the neighborhood declined, and, as Salvador rapidly grew, poor people constructed shacks on stilts all along the shoreline, even in front of the ICBIE. Urban renewal of the last twenty years ended that abuse, and the conditions have been steadily improving. Now, with the ICBIE bringing quality education to local kids and offering cultural events for the entire community, Ribeira is experiencing a real Renaissance. With the start of the Ribeira of the Arts festival, people from all over Salvador will begin to discover the cultural wealth of the cidade baixa.
The ICBIE has just opened a website for an archive of photos. Arranged in categories (”Il Casarão,” “The Leonardo da Vinci International Library,” The ICBIE Art Hostel,” “ICBIE Activities,” “ICBIE People,” “The Neighborhood,” and so on, this photo gallery is open to everyone. You can upload your best ICBIE photos and share them with with world, adding them to any gallery, or you can make your own new one.
To access the gallery, just click on the link to the right, “ICBIE PHOTO GALLERY” in the “ICBIE on the Web” column.
(Thanks to Annie Neumann for the great new photo of Pietro.)
For more than thirty years, ICBIE president Pietro Gallina has waged a constant battle on the behalf of alternative artists, musicians and actors, helping them to gain public exposure without selling their souls to the corporate control of official culture. His aversion for the opulent consumerism of the global cultural industry (which is also powerfully present in the city of Salvador) has led him to initiate an ambitious project, Ribeira of the Arts, where authentic artists can show their works and play their music to the local community, using the ICBIE as a prestigious and dignified venue.
To give the project as much clout as possible, Pietro has cobbled together an impressive list of collaborations and sponsorships: the City of Salvador, the Federal University of Bahia (with the participation of Prof. Mauro Porru), the Italian Institute of Culture of Rio de Janeiro (with the Director, Rubens Piovano) and the Italian Consulate in Salvador (with Consul Giovanni Pisanu). The renowned film historian Paolo Spedicato will also be present.
Planned as an annual event, the Ribeira of the Arts Project will begin with a bang next Sunday afternoon, February 24th at 4 PM. A concert by Reis and Aldo Brizzi will begin at 4:30, followed by concert and an extended jam session led by Jota Velloso (Caetano’s talented nephew), with the participation of Alex Mesquita and Stella Maris.
At the same time, the ICBIE will host its largest art exhibit, with works by Menelaw Sete, Leonel Mattos and Josè Paranaguá, without forgetting the ICBIE’s own Julio Costa and Bigod Silva, as well as a host of other street artists from the city’s Projeto Salvador Grafita.
After next Sunday’s kickoff, Ribeira of the Arts will continue on the last Sunday of each month, with an open air arts fair from 8 AM to 2 PM, where artworks, painting, sculpture, books, LPs, CDs, videos, DVDs, and local gastronomic delights will be sold, and community workshops for drawing, music and dance will be held. From 4 PM to 11 PM the fair will continue, with concerts, art exhibits, theatrical performances, dance and film projections, involving the entire local community. The area around the ICBIE will be a pedestrian zone, and all automobiles will be banned.
In both size and scope, Ribeira of the Arts provides the Cidade baixa with an unprecedented opportunity to share and exchange its culture. For the first time, in this appalling cultural desert, a full range of artistic expression will be offered to the entire population
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Pietro is throwing Annie straight into the complexities of local life. Yesterday they visited our friends at the Minha vó Flor orphanage, and Annie was able to see the awful contradiction: orphanages are by definition one of the saddest places in the world, and this one is even sadder for its sorry state, yet it is filled with such joyous, energetic and affectionate children. Here are some photos that capture a bit of the magic.
The first of the five new mini-apartments is finished, and the others aren’t far behind. Although all this building represents a significant strain on our finances, it is of course an important investment in the ICBIE’s future, and is a central part of our growth, permitting us to offer hospitality to more volunteers, social workers, and paying guests.
This is also a rare moment of peace at the ICBIE. Carnival has passed, Celeste and her friends have departed, Marlene has gone to visit her family in Belo Horizonte, Bogus is still in Italy, and Pietro announced that last Sunday, for the first time in four years, he was all alone! (He didn’t sound too upset about the solitude, either.)
On Monday a new volunteer arrived: yet another recruit from AOSR’s Bridge to Bahia Program. Annie Neumann graduated from AOSR last June, and she has worked in Rome for the last four or five months, in order to make an extended visit to Salvador, where she will remain well into April. She will be helping to get the new academic year up and rolling, besides teaching some English conversation courses and doing some cataloging in the library. We extend a warm ICBIE welcome to her and wish her a world of happiness during her stay.
In order to foster international friendship and understanding, especially among children, we are always ready to hook up with groups or associations, and, in that sense, the most recent ICBIE partnership seems to be a particularly good fit. The Anguillara Basketball Association, located in the beautiful Italian town north of Rome on Lake Bracciano, trains eighty kids between the ages five and fifteen, and they compete in three different leagues. Directed by a former star of Italian women’s basketball, Maria Carmela Verardi, the Anguillara teams are famous for their community involvement, as well as their impressive records on the courts. Maria Carmela’s husband, Oscar Reale, is the association’s President; because he also works with me in the music department at the American Overseas School of Rome, he has followed the ICBIE story from the very beginning, and has been the principal catalyst for this new partnership.
Yesterday morning at 11 o’clock, I gave an ICBIE presentation in Anguillara’s Angela Zucconi Library (shown in the photo on the right) to a crowd of about forty people, including coaches, kids, their parents, city officials, and even the Commander of the Museum of Military Aeronautics at Vigna del Valle, Col. Gianni Amadio. The reception could not have been more cordial, and after the twenty minute long presentation, a lively question and answer session followed. We discussed ways in which the two communities can get acquainted, and the general enthusiasm will certainly get the ball rolling quickly. I also had a long conversation with Col. Amadio about Ribeira and its famous Hydroport, where Italo Balbo landed in 1930: another odd coincidence that binds us. Once again, it was wonderful to see how the ICBIE project brings people together.
Roy Zimmerman
While the madness of carnival reaches its peak, the ICBIE continues to organize for the 2008 school year, and the schedule for the computer program is ready. These precious course offerings will permit dozens of kids to attain valuable skills that will greatly improve their chances for finding meaningful jobs. Here is a summary of the offerings.
Foundation course - 3 months, 3 hours per week, for a total of 36 hours, 04/03/2008 - 29/05/2008. Two sections: Tuesday and Thursday 15:00 - 16:30 (Afternoon course) or Tuesday and Thursday 19:30 - 21:00 (Evening course)
Keyboard skills - 2 months, 3 hours per week, for a total of 24 hours, 03/03/2008 - 28/04/2008. Monday and Wednesday 19:30 - 21:00
Computer Maintenance and Configuration - 3 months, 3 hours per week, for a total of 36 hours, 01/03/2008 - 24/05/2008. Saturday 15:00 - 18:00
Computer courses are offered in collaboration with ARCI Solidarity of Reggio Emilia, Italy, whose contributions help with the salaries of the instructors.
The summer holidays are building to their carnival climax, and soon it will be back to school. The ICBIE is getting ready, and as usual, Marlene has beaten everyone to the punch, with her impeccable organizational skills. She has already planned out the first trimester of Italian courses, which will begin March 1st. To publicize the offerings, a colorful flyer is ready, and it comes with a red warning triangle and the caption “You’d better run! There aren’t many openings.” We’re always making the poor Bahians run. It’s our mission!
