THANK YOU!

Our third edition of the festival was a blast and we feel thankful for the reception, participation and beautiful words we have received from you all.

We wanted to say THANK YOU.

We had 10 days of joy showing the work of 45 artists, international and local in 5 different venues in London and we received more than 2K people from different backgrounds and cultures… and of course Latinxs.

ENCUENTROS is the word that defined this edition of the festival, encounter of different generations, art expressions and cultures. We had a fabulous Luzmila Carpio, singing in Quechua to all ages and languages at the Milton Court, Barbican Centre. Drums and dance gathering LatinAmerican and Africa in a Bullerengue workshop and jam session with Mbilla Arts. We created a fantastic atmosphere expressing poetry in different ways: recital, dance and music at Latinx Poetics in Motion, 4 poets and open mics showed off the talent, Somos Chichas showed a performance worked with the drumming group Witchas Collective. In partnership with Rockfeedback, we proudly presented the twice Grammy-nominated and Polaris Prize-winning artist, Lido Pimienta. The Richmix was full of colours and rhythms with tropical jazz of Colectiva, hip hop of Desta French and the art exhibition of the afrocolombian artist Lilophilia and music by DJ Amancai. The premier of Salsa y Control, a performance directed by Venezuelan actress Gledys Ibarra. A thoughtful conversation with writers Yara Rodrigues and Jessica Sequeira about their new work. And of course a Big Bang party at Jazz Cafe, Candela Viva take over with Ms.Nina, Dj BushBBY and Dj Manuka Honey put everyone to dance all night long.

Our programming partners are fantastic and we feel absolutely proud of this collective work with Literary South, Movimientos, Cine Latino and Amalgama. We would like to give a special thanks to Candela Viva and its funder Janin Pineda for instigating that late party show.

Special thanks to the venues RichMix, Gnome House, Kings Place, Jazz Cafe and special thanks to the Barbican team who were absolutely inclusive and took us through a very interesting production, programming journey that taught us a lot!… Finally special thanks to our support organisations Café Los Hermanos, Instituto Cervantes for their constant support and a new collaboration that we hope to continue in the nearly future, Mbilla Arts. Finally, all of this was possible thanks to the funding of the Arts Council.

The most special ones, all the audience that made this festival a great fun and success, THANK YOU.

We hope to come back soon with more!

Somos Guerreras Talk

A night dedicated to women in music and their ways of transforming realities by using the arts to denounce hard social conditions that are affecting the reality of many women, specially in Central America.

We screened reflexive and heartbreaking short films documentaries from Central America, Desenredar el Ser by Anais Taracena (Guatemala). This short film talked about the story of one woman that represent the life of many others, that have been force to grow against her will. Also, we enjoyed Cápsula 2: Aurora Chaj – Cantautora by Colectivo Lemow (Guatemala), this is a beautiful short film that take us to through the life of this songwriter and popular musician that uses her music to tell stories about her life, women realities and create awareness of the life of many families in the city.

We then introduced and had a very thoughtful conversation with Somos Guerreras, a hip hop band from Central America that is a musical and artistic project that claims hip hop as a space for feminist struggle, consisting on Rebeca Lane, Audry Funk and Nakury.

Please see the interview made by Louise Morris, journalist for LAB – Latin American Bureau for this talk, here you can see the entire night, for those who couldn’t make it

Thanks to everyone who came, we had a full house this day!