Brescia: seventh edition of the Peace Festival, this year's focus is Africa

It is difficult to imagine, in recent history, a period in which the calls for peace are more pressing and necessary than this. Every day the newspapers are full of updates on the ongoing wars from the Middle East to the Russian-Ukrainian front, knowing full well that they are not the only conflicts currently active in the world. In this tragic scenario, Peace education is an essential task.

Il Peace Festival of the city of Brescia was conceived, designed and organized for the first time by the Municipality and the many entities interested in the theme seven years ago. The promoting group works continuously within the International Construction Site for the Good and Peace of Humanity, established in 2017 on the occasion of the first edition of the festival. Together with the Municipality and the Province of Brescia, it includes the Universities - State and Catholic -, the Territorial School Office, the Diocese of Brescia, the Consultation for Cooperation and Peace, together with foundations, associations and local entities. Today more than ever the sense of that call to extra-ordinary peace, to a value that was recognized and cultivated even in moments of relative calm, has become more urgent than ever.

Today as then, the Peace Festival wants to be an occasion of study, dialogue and comparison on a difficult and complex objective but which, in its multiple political and geopolitical, cultural and social declinations, calls for the commitment of everyone, as well as the attention of institutions, including local ones.

The focus around which the intense program of this seventh edition will revolve is Africa, a multifaceted and multifaceted continent, full of complexity and characteristics like all continents, which the Western gaze instead tends to flatten and consider as a single large reality. The 2024 festival will be an opportunity to talk about Africa with some of its protagonists, to offer knowledge and grasp which paths are available for a development that is not detached and predatory with respect to the starting context.

The schedule was composed with approximately 70 events organized by 60 different entities, and collaborations have been activated with the Brescia-based entities Afrobrix Afro-European Festival, Dòsti Festival of Religious Arts and Cultures and Umanità Migrante, Parma Peace Festival and Many Faiths Under the Same Sky in Bergamo.

As per tradition, this year too, within the Peace Festival, Fondazione Brescia Musei has created a show-event within the Museum of Santa Giulia dedicated to an artist who addresses the connection between contemporary art and human rights. In recent years that same space has hosted the exhibitions of Zehra Dogan, Badiucao, Victoria Lomasko and the collective of Iranian artists Sonia Balassanian, Farideh Lashai, Shirin Neshat, Soudeh Davoud e Zoya Shokoohi.

In this edition the protagonist of the exhibition will be the Sudanese artist, curator and activist Khalid Al-Baih (Bucharest, Romania, 1980), the exhibition will be entitled “Khalid Albahi. The Season of Migration to the North”. The exhibition, curated by Electra Stamboulis, will be open to the public from Saturday, November 9, 2024 to Sunday, February 23, 2025 in a Museum of Santa Giulia in Brescia.

With “Khalid Albaih. The Season of Migration to the North”, Fondazione Brescia Musei and the Municipality of Brescia continue the narrative journey of the contemporary begun in 2019: an itinerary that invites some of the most significant voices of the international art scene, still unpublished in Italy or in the West, to bring their own reflections to the spaces of the Museo di Santa Giulia in Brescia. Contemporary Art and Human Rights they meet to create a synthesis in which dissident artists and activists can find a way into the contemporary art system having already crossed it in the context of activism, social criticism, artistic militancy for a future yet to be imagined and where art can play a leading role.

The official inauguration of the exhibition was held on Friday 11 October at 18.30 pm in the Salone Vanvitelliano in Palazzo Loggia, a “passing of the baton” open to the public in the presence of the artists. Khalid Al-Baih e Zoya Shokoohi.

Il program of initiatives conceived in collaboration with the dozens of entities that actively support the Festival is particularly substantial.

Among the various initiatives, the cycle of four seminars dedicated to the theme "The role of the UN today and the possible reform prospects” active since October 11, curated by the University of Brescia – Department of Law, University for Peace, Provincial Coordination of Local Authorities for Peace and International Cooperation.

Another event of particular interest is the one scheduled Thursday 24 October at 20.30 in the San Cristo Complex entitled “Israel and Palestine, wanting peace – dialogue between two fathers”. On this same theme, we also highlight the presentation of the book “The never-ending conflict"of Paul MagriIn calendar Monday 18 November at 18pm in the Sant'Agostino Hall.

The presentation of a different Afro musical expression is the aim of “African Night”, which will take place Saturday 23 November from 16 at Carme and some selected venues.

Among the many meetings of the Festival we also remember “Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth – An Anti-Colonial Manifesto Still Relevant", scheduled Monday 11 November at 15pm in the Santa Giulia Auditorium.

Also not to be missed is the closing of the Festival to be held Saturday 30 November at 20pm al Teatro Grande with the concert of the Orchestra del Mare, curated by Fondazione Teatro Grande. A charity evening of extraordinary value in which some of the most significant musicians of the Brescia area will play instruments made in Opera prison violin making, with the wood of the boats with which migrants have crossed or attempted to cross the MediterraneanThe proceeds of the evening will be intended for the “Metamorphosis” project which finances violin-making workshops in prisons. The mayor of Lampedusa will also be present at the evening Philip Mannino.

The official inauguration was instead scheduled for Friday 8 November at 17pm in the Salone Vanvitelliano of Palazzo Loggia with a round table attended by Godeliève Mukasarasi – Rwandan, winner of the Human Rights International Award in 2011 and the International Women of Courage Award in 2018 -, and Mohamed Ba – Senegalese, writer and playwright – moderated by the journalist Anna Pozzi. An occasion also to remember the genocide that took place in Rwanda exactly thirty years ago. The Award was then presented Brescia for Peace 2024, curated by the Coordination of local authorities for peace and international cooperation: this year it was awarded to the memory of David Sassoli.