One of the key projects organised by the British Council in the Near East and North Africa Region is the New Writing / Literature Regional project which includes British Council offices in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, and Tunisia in collaboration with the Council’s Literature, Drama and Dance Departments in London. The Project aims to provide links and opportunities for collaboration for publishers, translators, writers and playwrights in the region and the UK.
The project works in three main areas:
This aspect of the project focuses on creating mutually beneficial cultural relations between writers, publishers and translators from the Arab world and the UK. This will hopefully lead to and increase in the quality and quantity of literary work translated between Arabic and English.
To this end the British Council is supporting the participation of the Arab World as the Market Focus in the London Book Fair (LBF) 2008, by organising a three days cultural programme to celebrate the strength and diversity of Arabic literature. The programme will consist of a series of talks, discussions, debates aimed at introducing the Arab publishing market and current trends in contemporary Arabic literature to a UK audience. The programme will showcase some of the best writers and writing from the Arabic world.
We have organised an Arab writer tours and showcases in the UK, UK publishers visits to the Cairo Bookfair; and two translation conferences in Syria in 2005 and in the UK in 2006. The latter brought forty Arab publishers, writers and translators to London for the first time to meet their UK counterparts.
This aspect of the project aims to strengthen the playwriting skills of emerging young playwrights from the NENA region and introduce their work to audiences in the region and the UK. The project started two years ago in Syria with a series of workshops for the students of the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Damascus to develop their own plays and ended with public readings in Syria and the Royal Court Theatre, London last year. The project then became regional. In partnership with the Royal Court Theatre, London we selected 21 young playwrights from over a hundred applicants from seven Arab countries to work with two acclaimed playwrights from the UK, David Greig and April De Angelis who are working with the young talents on developing their own plays and writing techniques. The first workshop took place in Damascus in April 2007 followed by one in Tunisia November and a third workshop and public readings in March Cairo The project will be concluded with public readings of some of the developed plays in the region and at the Royal Court Theatre in London with the possibility of producing one or more of the plays.
This aspect of the project brings together young writers from the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia) who writes in English with UK mentors from the University of Paris in London to in a unique form of inter-cultural dialogue.
The mentors are assisting the young writers in strengthening their writing skills. Both mentors and writers are exploring the area of writing in English as a second language.
The project is inspired by Edward Said’s notion of ‘imaginary frontiers’ which is a motif developed throughout Said’s work as a notion which both destroys and rebuilds the notion of comparative literary aesthetics, finally working towards the possibility of a true ‘world literature’.
The project specializes in three key areas reportage, fiction and poetry and it includes a series of workshops, readings and online mentoring sessions held in Morocco and Tunisia throughout 2007 and 2008. These activities will culminate in a conference and a UK-based live web event sponsored by the British Council and the University of London
Find out more about the medi-café visit http://medi-cafe.britishcouncil.org/
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