L’Art Rue Created in 2006, by internationally renowned Tunisian contemporary dance duet, Selma and Soufian Ouissi, in defiance to the censorship of Bin Ali’s dictatorship, L'Art Rue is today one of the most established cultural organizations in Tunisia and North Africa. Rooted in the heart of the Medina (Old City) in Tunis, L’Art Rue offers an open civic space for free expression, imagination, critical thinking.
With a mission that considers art a vector of educational, social and economic development, L’Art rue´s approach is one that immerses artists in community and immerses community in art. It achieves that through a series of residency, performances and debates that root artists in the social, economic and political realities of their local contexts.
The need for this approach in today’s Tunisia is huge. The political wins celebrated after the success of the 2011 revolution, are being challenged today and are far from being translated into economic wins for most of Tunisians. High unemployment rates exasperated in the aftermath of the pandemic, coupled with a current political crisis in government, leave millions of Tunisians, especially young ones, disempowered from participation in decisions that affect their lives and the future of their reborn country. L’Art Rue are sensitive to this reality and committed to engaging artists in contributing to change it.
L’Art Artistic Residency Program supported by Mimeta, engages artists with young people from the local communities, to enhance their professional skills, as well as their awareness of the civic role they can play within their communities. The artists on residency start off by immersing themselves into the social, political and economic realities of the community they are placed in, then developing artists products inspired by these realities. The products are then brought back to community, through L’Art Rue showcasing and debate programs. Seven of the 23 artists who participated in 2021 residencies, attracted an audience of 1000 during the presentation of their work.
L’Art Rue Change your classroom initiatives, works with teachers and students in primary schools, to collectively agree on the design of the classroom in their school, seeding notions of creative imagination, free choice, democratic vote and collective decision making. All core concepts for a society aspiring for democratic change.
L’Art Rue’s bi-annual Dream City Festival galvanizes all of the organization’s initiatives into one spectacular public space event that brings L’Art Rues melt of art and community work back to the Tunisian public. Mimeta supported L’Art Rues new Dream Performative Digital initiative, which enabled artist engage with a pandemic isolated audience. With EU funding, L’Art is able today to share the models it has developed with younger organizations in the Middle East and Africa, providing them with grants and capacity building to develop their own initiatives for free expression and social change through the arts. Mimeta’s support to L’Art Rue dates back to 2013 when the organization was a participant in Al Mawred Abbara program, but continues today to further enhance the pioneering model of this exemplary organization.
