Forum for the Arts in the Mediterranean (Fam) in Tunis

The Forum for the Arts in the Mediterranean area (FAM) is born in 2004-2005 from a common initiative of Tunisian (Zeinab Farhat, Tawfiq Jebali), Syrian (Hassan Abbas, Hanan Kessab Hassan, Rim Kattab, Cécile Boex) and European artists and Cultural managers (Ornella d’Agostino, Toni Cots, Gerarda Ventura, Fanny Bouquerel). Pioneering cultural cooperation project, it offers an opportunity to develop exchanges between artists and professionals involved in the cultural field within the Mediterranean.
By organising workshops dedicated to choreographic art (including dramaturgy techniques) and to cultural management training, FAM was created, accordind to Gerarda Ventura, Italian Cultural manager “to foster professional activity, dialogue and mutual understanding between young choreographic artists and young cultural operators from different disciplines and countries. To our view, these exchanges could contribute to develop the role of the artists and cultural operators in the building of civil society.”

In Damascus, FAM already organised in August 2004 a choreographic workshop for 15 Syrian and Mediterranean dancers together with a final presentation of the work, meeting and debates. Next March, and on the same line, FAM will organise at the Al Teatro of Tunis a choreographic and dramatic workshop for 10 professional Mediterranean choreographers, a cultural management workshop for 10 young Euro-Mediterranean cultural operators (all disciplines), a initiation to cultural management workshop for 15 Tunisian artists/students and a Performing Arts workshop involving 10 participants. Two evening will be dedicated to the presentation of their artistic works followed by a debate.
Aimed at young choreographic artists and professional cultural operators or professionals-to-be, the Tunis workshops will be attended by participants from the whole mediterranean: Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Italy. The workshops will be animated by experts and pedagogues from the same region.


After the fruitful collaboration already experienced in Damascus and soon in Tunis, FAM will try, to follow up on the artistic and cultural management training in the Mediterranean area, in order to further develop the experience in other countries in the Mediterranean and also include other artistic disciplines.
Indeed, for Zeinab Farhat, Director of El Teatro, “after Tunis, FAM also wants to guarantee continuity in exchanges and activities in order to develop a cultural and artistic Mediterranean life. The region needs a stronger and flexible regional cooperation, involving operators and independent organisations, artists from different countries”.

The Project was financed by the European Union, and carried out With the support of , Fonds Roberto Cimetta, and Regione Sardegna and Thanks to Goethe Institute Damascusus, Mustafa Ali Foundation.