This project is sponsored by the British Council and will bring together writers from the Maghreb to work with UK-based writers and academics.
The aim is to bring together writers from the Maghreb and the UK in a unique form of inter-cultural dialogue which will enrich all partners.
The project will provide an opportunity for writers from the Maghreb to bring their work into a wider international forum.
For the past two years British Council Morocco has played host to the Moroccan Writers’ Community. This was a group of dedicated Moroccan writers and scholars who have been writing in English and in collaboration with a variety of UK-based writers.
All writers agreed that that they had been enriched by the experience. UK writers, in particular, declared that they had been enormously impressed by the quality of writing from this culturally rich and diverse part of the world.
On the back of the success of this Community, it was decided to move the project to a larger level, encompassing Tunisia as well as Morocco.
The new project, with the title Medi-Café, was launched in Marrakesh on 23 February 2007. The launch brought together the writers from the Maghreb and UK writers and academics in a series of workshops and seminars, culminating in a project on ‘Writing the City, Writing Marrakesh’.
Medi-Café project specializes in three key areas reportage, fiction and poetry, each mentored by Dr Andrew Hussey, Professor Stephen Regan and Dr Kate Pullinger, established writers as well as academics.
Most exciting of all is the expectation that a new generation of writers from the Maghreb will emerge from this creative encounter.
The project is inspired by Edward Said’s notion of ‘imaginary frontiers’; this 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’. This is a crucial trope in the development in the emerging discipline of inter-cultural studies.
The specific aim of this project is therefore to bring together theoretical and practical aspects of this notion, and to investigate therefore what it means to be writing within and beyond cultural boundaries.
The project took the form of a series of workshops, readings and online mentoring sessions held in Morocco and Tunisia throughout 2007.
These activities culminated in a conference sponsored by the British Council and the University of London that took take place in Paris on 14 and 15 March 2008.
The conference was attended by the Medi-Café project mentors and participants from Morocco and Tunisia. The workshop was preceded by a press conference organised by Professor Andrew Hussey, Dean of London University in Paris.
For more information visit the website: http://medi-cafe.britishcouncil.org
Fatima Ahloulay
Projects Officer
British Council
36 rue de Tanger
BP 427 Rabat
Morocco
Telephone +212 (0) 37 76 08 36
Fax +212 (0) 37 76 08 50
fatima.ahloulay@britishcouncil.org.ma
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