The Planetarium of Bogotá was selected as host the XII Congress of the Association of Planetariums of South America – APAS in December 2021. Likewise, with this decision made by the association’s board of directors, the stage will also assume the vice presidency for a period of two years.
Bogotá will be the first city in the north of the South American continent to host this meeting, which makes this congress a unique opportunity to stimulate regional participation.
APAS is a nonprofit organization bringing together the main planetariums of the region countries. Its intention is to generate cooperation and interinstitutional exchange through meetings, seminars and meetings. Initially it was created with the planetariums of the southern cone such as Chile, Argentina and Brazil in 2003 and, later, it extended its network and began to have the participation of more countries such as Perú, Bolivia and Colombia since 2013.
In addition, thanks to the management of the current president, the Argentinian Diego Bagu and the Brazilian vice president Paulo Sobreira, APAS was recognized as an organization by the International Planetarium Society, which allows it to have representation and vote in the largest association of planetariums on the planet.
For Carlos Molina, coordinator of the Planetarium of Bogotá, the fact that the Colombian capital has been selected as the venue for the meeting “will help encouraging many more planetariums from Ecuador, Bolivia and Perú to join the initiative and be present at the meeting”.
The candidature of Planetarium of Bogotá, supported by the Idartes International project, a window to the world, it reinforced its focus on having an increasingly stronger union between art, science and technology.
“The power of holding this meeting on our stage, within all the work from the Instituto Distrital de las Artes – Idartes, is that initiatives carried out such as the Full Dome Festival or the Real Mix Festival, which will be able to call other communities that, although they may be linked to the audiovisual field, have not traditionally seen planetariums as a possible space to obtain more visibility”, says Carlos Molina, next vice president of APAS.
Holding this event in the Colombian capital in December 2021 shows that Bogotá is becoming a cultural and scientific epicenter of great importance not only in the Latin American continent, but in the world. It will be a key event to contribute to the process of cultural, tourist and economic reactivation of the country, because “the idea is that the meeting allows attendees to have the experience of the different activities that take place in the city”, says Carlos Molina of the Planetarium of Bogotá.