Day 4

Day 4

After two days of travelling and overnights stops in Lima and Tarapoto we are now in San Roque de Cumbaza where we will stay for the next 5 weeks and is home to Sachaqa Arts Centre.

Attached images are of the community we are staying in  - further pictures can be seen at our flickr account ... http://www.flickr.com/photos/67813410@N05/

Today we met Tomas (http://www.turismolamas.com/) who organises events and arts project in Lamas (a near by town). Thomas is really interested in the Transporter project and the work of rednile and our individual artwork and has agreed to help organise a Factory Night (FN) event. Many communities/towns were discussed but it was felt that Lamas was the most suitable place due to its already burgeoning cultural offer and a place that would attract more local people to this sort of event. Lamas is also famous for its folklore and preservation of Amazonian traditional culture. The concept of Factory nights is a new way of working for artists in Peru so we had to choose an area that would attract the most interest. We discussed many ideas in our pigeon Spanish, and with the help of many translators have narrowed down a variety of ways that FN may work –

·         an event where each person can create artwork as part of a large scale temporary installation or each person creates something new as an individual,

·         FN at a modern day stone castle built by a local businessman,

·         hand out disposable cameras to participants where they capture what makes their environment special – discussions lead from this,

·         day or night event where a variety of artists are invited to Sachaqa Arts Centre who have not been before to give artists talk about their work – introduces new artists to SAC and the eco village and creates networking opportunities. 

We are really aware of the slower pace of life here and realise that we also have to slow down and understand that there may be limitations to what we can achieve while we are here. (Its as far from Newcastle as you can get!!) Internet for example, is accessed through a dongle and is shared with other families and often do not work due to the torrential rain!! so if we don’t post for a while this will be why!

The people have all been so friendly so far and many are very creative, we met a sculptor the other day who was in the middle of making a didgeridoo and a local woman has offered to show us how to make the ceramic pots she was trying to sell us. We are due to visit Lamas on Wednesday to ascertain the right site and environment for Factory Nights so will look to update our blog again after that. Tomas has also asked us to be part of a local project in Lamas where they are trying to get 200 different wall designs painted by different artists so we are working on ideas for this.!!

Hasta luego!!

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