Art Moves Africa – Retracing Roots and Tracing New Routes: Mobility and Touring in North Africa

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Introduction
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TION
Art Moves Africa (AMA) is an international notfor-profit
organisation that aims to facilitate cultural
and artistic exchanges within the African
continent. AMA offers travel grants to artists
and cultural practitioners living and working in
Africa to travel within the African continent in
order to engage in the exchange of information,
the enhancement of skills, the development of informal
networks and the pursuit of cooperation.
AMA was first launched as a program
by the Young Arab Theatre Fund (YATF) and a
group of African organizations. It was designed
to facilitate and encourage the mobility of artists
and cultural operators within the African continent.
In 2001, YATF participated in meetings in
Egypt, Kenya and Zimbabwe, together with different
organizations and cultural activists from
Africa and the Arab world. The meetings were
aimed at linking organizations and individuals,
and creating informal continent-wide networks.
The participants agreed that one of the major
obstacles for artists and cultural professionals
in Africa was the persistent lack of funds specifically
allocated to support travel. AMA was
launched in July 2005.
Over the last 14 years, AMA has allocated
809 grants to artists and art practitioners
living and working in Africa. A wide range of
projects has thus been implemented to develop
the African creative sector. AMA has produced
regular evaluations and collected statistics of
applications received and of grants allocated to
African cultural practitioners. Moreover, it has
commissioned and published three studies on
mobility and touring in East (2011/2015) and
Central Africa (2015), as well as a guide to cultural
mobility funding opportunities to/from Africa
in collaboration with On the Move (2015/2018).
These initiatives have helped AMA to develop
its interventions as a grant-making organization
and to identify needs within the African artistic
mobility sector.