Traveling Panamanian Art

A group of six young and up-and-coming artists will represent Panama in the World Event Young Artists in England.

In the wake of the recent Olympic Games in London, the English city of Nottingham adds another event to the cultural activities that always happen around the athletic encounter. The World Event Young Artists (WEYA) convenes a thousand emerging artists (18 to 30 years old) from across the world for a 10-day program of cultural festivals, workshops and meetings, notes Alexandra Schjelderup, a cultural promoter and the national coordinator of this activity.

Panama will send the following six representatives who were selected from competitions: Carla Ávila and Germán Batista, civil engineers and artists from the Technological University of Panama (UTP); the plastic artists Samuel Rumaldo Choy (from Santa María la Antigua University) and Martanoemi Noriega (from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Panama), the urban dancer José Solís Jimenez (from Latina University) and the filmmakers Martín Proaño and Tomás Cortés Rosselot.

"There are countries with much more support for culture, and they could send entire groups of music, dance or culinary experts. But in our case, since we are so few, we tried to diversify and show a range of creative diversity. Once selected, we had to seek additional support from other people outside the UTP and WEYA."
The city of Nottingham and Trent University, located in that same city, will cover the room and board for the thousand participants, she indicates.

The Panamanian delegation leaves today and is scheduled to return on September 18.
How did this initiative come about? The promoter tells the story: "After UTP participated in the Iberian-American Cultural Campus (OEI) on the Canary Islands two years ago, Alessandro Stillo from WEYA came looking for partners to organize this event. They were invited to Nottingham last year to become acquainted with the space where the event would be held and to organize the calls for artists, which were quite different from country to country."

Schjelderup emphasizes that the event will highlight the connection between the world and the arts, and will demonstrate that an interdisciplinary team (engineers, fine arts, urban art) can generate synergies and cooperative ties upon returning to Panama. "We are at a point where we should go back to a Renaissance approach to art and knowledge."