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Arte es Vida – Art is Life

Atelier Favela: An added value of Ticuantepe’s community.

Who we are:

Atelier Favela works in Nicaragua as a humanitarian organization that supports the poverty-stricken children of Ticuantepe. Through lessons in Arts, Music, Dance, Theatre, Circus and Capoeira at our cultural centre we hope to stimulate personal development in our students. These lessons are the only opportunity these children have to access Arts Education in this small community.

Our organization also supports product-development projects in the community to help young Nicaraguan women with their ambitions for the future. We have two products that are designed exclusively here at the Cultural Centre and hand-made by local women using recycled materials, “Bolsa de Botas”, and “Abanicos”.

In Atelier Favela, materials that may at first seem useless, such as old plastic bags, second-hand ties, boots, worn jeans and old fans, are given new life as they are transformed into products that are sold all over the world. We do this to leave a positive and clear message about the importance of recycling, and to show that with very little we can create products that are both beautiful and fully functional.

Our motto is “Arte es Vida”(art is life) because Atelier Favela wants to be a source of inspiration for people regardless of their cultural or social background, where they can discover the power of their own creative ability. With this experience and awareness we want to offer them a positive and bright future.

Our hope is that young people, who are labeled as underprivileged, may be able to colour their own lives and take charge of their future.

Method of work: 

Atelier Favela functions as a creative breeding place where everybody comes together to cooperate, including volunteers, artists, teachers and young people of the poor rural community of Ticuantepe.

Everybody tries in their own way to contribute at Atelier Favela to make this a place where everybody can participate, as well as express and develop themselves. All this positive energy makes this place a “womb of creativity” and this creativity allows us to express art at a pure state, showing to local people many different aspects of it.

This team, working together and exchanging knowledge makes it possible for Atelier Favela to be an unlimited source of inspiration. This will be an enriching experience for everybody, including anyone who stays for a long or short period of time at Atelier Favela, and mainly for Nicaraguan people. 

Abanica and Bolsa de bota:

We support product-development projects in the community to help out young Nicaraguan women with their ambitions for the future. The “Bolsa de Bota” and “Abanico”  are products all designed exclusively here at the Cultural Centre and hand-made by local women using recycled materials.

The hard work that goes into developing these products teaches the women about design, marketing and economics. They are involved in the whole process of making the product, from the initial design concept to its completion, so they have hands-on experience of all the creative processes necessary for successful product development, creating a sustainable cycle of employment. We hope this positive cycle can grow to help more women in the future who are now struggling for a better life.

The added value: 

We are now developing a project that will allow us to be 100% self-sufficient and will make Atelier Favela an added value of the rural community of Cuatro Esquinas de Ticuantepe.

In the self-sufficient future those running the activities in the centre are mainly locals assisted by volunteers. To make this happen, we are giving to our youth and women the chance to experiment a responsability position so that, they will be able to guide new employees in everyday activities.

We believe that activities such as the art classes or the capoeira course can be run succesfully by locals, but also the administration and the coordination of the structure itself are easily manageable for them. We need to train them and involve them as much as possible so they can better understand the different mechanisms that allow Atelier Favela to run.

We need to know them, and they need to know us to build a mutual trust relationship, which will allow us to leave them the keys of Atelier Favela’s future.

Atelier Favela wants to be an opportunity for whosoever wants to contribute to the continuos development of our cultural centre. For this reason we want to recive something from the neighborhood community, and not just give them something.

Atelier Favela is now, and will keep doing that, offering services to the community such as sport, creativity, culture and work opportunities. But we want that the local community could put at the service of the centre her potentialities. We see for our future an interchange of services that we offer to them and that they offer to us.

What Atelier Favela is trying to hand down to locals are also moral values, that are, and that always will be, at the base of our internal structure.

For more information or to contact us:

http://www.atelierfavela.org/

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