Why rights of children are violated in Bogotá? Why building a life project is tough young people? Why ethnic displaced peoples and communities are threatened and misunderstood their worldviews, practices and knowledge in the city?
Since its inception, the Instituto Distrital de las Artes – Idartes recognizes that art and culture are key elements for social transformation, to give voice to the whole city, the rural and the urban. It is for this reason that, from November, the entity joins forces with the Foundation PLAN to work together in the citizenship from the arts and rights in Bogotá Project, which will seek, through several activities and artistic laboratories, contribute to the recognition and guarantee of children, adolescents, and young people art rights.
Activities will be defined into two components, Con el poder del arte y Así suena Sumapaz (with the power of art and Sumapaz sounds like that). The first one will welcome 125 young people from Usaquen, Suba, Usme, Mártires and Ciudad Bolívar boroughs to participate in five collective artistic creation laboratories, enabling them to promote projects of community and young people entrepreneurship from the arts in order to encourage events and experiences of resilience, and community economies.
Así suena Sumapaz - Sumapaz sounds like that will be a sound exercise compile voices, songs, music and landscapes of this rural area of Bogotá. Its intention is to contribute to the construction of peasant memory, recognition and effective integration of rurality in the culture of the city. Four laboratories will be created, of which four podcasts will generated by children and adolescents of the two watersheds in Sumapaz.
“From sensitive, poetic and critical bodily dimensions that offer arts work with communities, ethnic peoples, cultural groups, and all in Bogotá. We will strengthen social skills and development of children, promoting a social transformation from the truth, memory and equity. Art transforms lives and becomes a prime agent in the reconstitution of the social fabric”, says Catalina Valencia Tobón, director of Idartes.
Art has proven to be a vital tool to address, from the sensitivity and expression, the questions mentioned and promotes changes in practices and policies at local, national and international levels. Art is also necessary for the understanding of the various environments.
Foundation PLAN is an organization of Colombian civil society, nonprofit, member of Plan International. For more than 55 years, they have been working in Colombia by promoting the rights of children, with the aim of improving the conditions of children living in extreme vulnerability.
“From the Foundation PLAN we celebrate this partnership with Idartes which will get us to children, adolescents and young people in Bogotá through art and memory as tools to build scenarios boosting their empowerment and peacebuilding”, says Angela Anzola Toro, CEO of Foundation PLAN.
Citizenship from arts and rights in Bogotá will allow progress towards equal opportunities and building with citizens of Bogotá where rights are guaranteed through expanding opportunities for social and productive inclusion in particular women, young people and families.