Dumb Spirits artistic residency in LABO come to its end!

I remember our first meeting at LABO center in January 2020. They were confused, shy, and a little scared. They were so unfamiliar with the course of action in LABO. However, you could’ve told that the members were willing with an enthusiasm to understand the modes of behavior to work among Live Room’s team in order to achieve their goals.

Initially, the band started by making covers of different famous songs (Rock, RnB and Pop) on Instagram during quarantine to while away the time, that’s how I noticed them.

At the time this group of musicians was struggling to find a place for practice, as a result they decided to contact me and after they’ve submitted their application, we selected them for our music artistic residency for local groups.

Dumb Spirits is the future great post-punk band!

Indeed, the residency began in February 2021 and ended in august with a very satisfactory rating from our part not only for having achieved the objectives set for this residency, namely the creation and recording of their very first original single called “Focused”, the creation of a 40-minute mixtape of popular covers as well as four Live performances (physical and digital), but also their attitude and motivation shown during the period of residency and their capacity to manage the project, taken decision and crisis management. So little by little the group had forged a new personality, stronger, more efficient (recruitment of a new bass player and integration of a keyboard player) and closer to the identity that their name bears: Dumb Spirits.

Finally, we were all dazzled by their last performance at the Urban Art Week festival where they set the stage on fire and blew up the 150 people who attended the concert. Congratulations again to Dumb Spirits for their amazing work. Big thanks to the entire Live Room team who managed this project and especially to Omar Chakor for its supervision. And don’t forget to stay tuned to our social media (IG: @liveroomproject) or Dumb Spirits one (IG: @dumb_spirits) to follow the continuity of this collaboration.

By Omar Mok’s, Artistic Director.

The unmissable crossroads of Street Art in Morocco made its return with the fifth edition of the Urban Art Week Festival of Tangier which saw the participation of a hundred artists from all disciplines of urban art and which took place during the week of July 05 to 11 in the LABO center for indoor activities and in the neighboring district for the murals.

Over 1300 visitors

The Urban Art Week festival has gathered around its program more than 1300 young people from all over the region and elsewhere to attend the graffiti collective exhibition, Live painting, to see cosplayers, follow dance battles and raps / beatbox challenges or to experience moments of joy at the music concerts. The Urban Art Week Fest knew once again how to create the good vibe and to make a bridge between the street art movement youth and old generation.

Also, the street art wall project has been a real success at the organizational, artistic and social level by bringing together 18 artists of different styles including 11 professional artists from Belgium, France and other Moroccan cities and 7 young artists representing the Laureates of the Graffiti program of the LABO le center all under the supervision of the artistic direction of Live Room to produce a series of murals under the theme of “High hopes”. Locals greatly appreciated the action that turned their old walls into a center of public interest and helped make the area cleaner.

Finally, we would like to thank with all our hearts all those who contributed directly or indirectly to the success of this edition, our dear visitors, the participating artists, the Live Room team and the festival partners whom we would like to mention by name: Drosos foundation, the Wilaya of Tangier, the French institute, American Language center, Amendis, Tendys, HitRadio, Radio 2M, Aswat Magharibia and 2M. It is thanks to you that this action has grown so much. Thank you again and see you next year

Photo reportage :

Murals: https://www.instagram.com/p/CRUd0ndj7Q7/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Day 2: https://www.instagram.com/p/CRALdntDXXz/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Day 3: https://www.instagram.com/p/CRCs-oJDhUW/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Day 6: https://www.instagram.com/p/CRKdfhnjZq2/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Day 7: https://www.instagram.com/p/CRMAuhRjYXY/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

D-2 for the fifth anniversary of the craziest festival in tangier, who’ll be held from the 5th til 11th July 2021, everyday starting from 3PM.

This year the stakes higher than ever : It will be the first time that the festival will be held in our local at the LABO center and will be mostly indoors.

In addition, it will also be a first to have a program that will last a whole week, with each day assigned to a different discipline of street art. 

We thought this would be ideal, on one hand given the limited space, and on the other hand so that our audience could have plenty of time to soak up their favorite artform, having been deprived of our festival’s past edition given the pandemic.

To give voice to all, we have multiplied the open-mics, scheduled competitive battles, diversified the activities with lots of workshops, and alongside that, artists full of energy and talents will be giving their live shows.

And of course, throughout the festival and just in front of our LABO center will be the pièce of resistance, the painting of the large mural of the Spanish hawma, which will bring together national and international artists and will revolve around the theme of the festival, “HIGH HOPES”.

Everything is more detailed in the program below:

We can’t wait to meet our tanjawi and national audience again, and we’re waiting for them with even more energy, positive vibes, and above all with the immense desire to give them the best time of their lives. 

Our staff are only waiting for the moment when they can start sowing smiles again within the attendees of our festival and see them flourish in the midst of so many colors. 

We are invested body and soul so that everything goes well and that the comfort of visitors is guaranteed.

Also, this festival is now possible thanks to our dear partners, Drosos, American Language Center of Tangier, L’Institut Français, Wilaya Of Tangier, Amendis and finally Tendy’s whom we thank dearly for all the support given.

In 3 words, this edition will be unforgettable, incredible, and unmissable, so see you there!

Live is Life!

End of season of LABO Programs 2020/2021

It’s with the greatest pride and enthusiasm that we are closing this 2020-2021 season with our 7 programs, namely : Writing and Slam Lab, AV VR Lab, Theater and Circus Arts, Youth Theater, Dance,  Handcrafts and Drawing,and finally Street Art.

On top of that, despite the pandemic, we’ve managed to organize covid-friendly meetings, talks, masterclasses and workshops that were all sold out very quickly and have witnessed a great success amongst the youth of Tangier.

Thanks to the huge determination of our participants and the entire team and supervisors of the Live Room, we’ve been able, in just 6 months, to achieve the learning goals that normally took us 9 months to complete.

Despite the difficulties encountered in some workshops, it was a real pleasure to see that our participants left our sessions with a broad smile, strong friendships, a sense of pride in their achievements and most importantly the impatience to arrive at the next session.

Many of our young artists have seen their talents revealed and sharpened throughout the classes, which was proved by their final shows, last Saturday.

This closing event featured the final play of the children group, the one of the older group, a part of the dance show of the dance group, the exhibition of paintings and realization of the art lab, the slam reading of the children of the writing lab, and much more. Parents were also there to witness their children’s works of art, and some of them discovered the insides of our LABO for the first time. It was the perfect occasion to thank them for all the trust they had put in us from the beginning and to show them that they were right to do so . 

In the meantime, our resident artists are preparing to launch their first EPs in early August after months of hard work in our studio.

We are proud and delighted to see that all our efforts, our dedication, our positive energy and our determination have paid off for this first season that our new LABO center has just experienced.

It is with the same attitude and even more hard work that we intend to approach the next season, which will have more programs, more opportunities and above all even more inspiration for the youth of Tangier.

We’ve been fueled by the smiles and satisfaction of all our beneficiaries and the biggest reward was to see them acknowledge how critical artistic expression is to our lives, and most importantly, that LIVE IS LIFE !

Live Room Project continues its accompaniment and support of young local and non-local artists and this time by organizing a series of artistic meetings/ master-classes during the month of May 2021 and in particular for musicians, technicians and visual artists.

This action comes in support of LABO programs for the development of creative skills among the young people and the residencies of musical artists of the Live Room Project. In total, 115 young and less young, beginner or professional artists were able to attend the three Artistic meetings, the main purpose of the workshops was to initiate them into the professional world and to emerge them in a suitable artistic process taking in consideration the development of artistic sector.

Introduction to music and sound techniques:

Masterclass lasting 4 hours organized on May 01 at the LABO center and led by the sound engineer and teacher at Studio M, Mohamed Atouf.

This training targeted control technicians (theater, stage or studio) and musicians who have or want to create their own home studios or who will sooner or later be brought back to work in a recording or mastering space. The workshop was attended by 30 participants who conveyed their satisfaction to us about the meeting and encouraged us to organize more similar events.

Art in relation to humans:

An interactive workshop with a practical part lasting 3 hours organized on May 8th at the LABO center and led by the young artist Nouh Fettah, a student of the INBA in Tetouan.

This training mainly targeted the participants of our Drawing and Handicrafts program and all other young visual artists who are amateurs or who are interested in making a career in this type of art. The workshop was attended by 48 participants who were very interactive with the content and who enriched the meeting with their brilliant questions and thoughts. They thanked us for this action and asked us to organize more workshops in the same direction.

Professionalization of the artist:

This 20-hour master class spread over three days from May 21 to 23, 2021 was organized at the LABO center in partnership with the French Institute of Tangier and led by Mounir Kabbaj, artistic consultant and expert in the music industry.

The masterclass was primarily aimed at our resident music artists who need to understand the world of the music industry, its different professions and the role of each career that could be developed in parallel. It was heavy, a little bit long, but very well attended by the 26 musicians who attended the whole training. It was also the perfect opportunity for us to meet new artists who came from the near region (Tangier, Tetouan, Larache) but also from other far cities (Meknes and Kalaat Magouna).

Special thanks for our team who made this happen.

LABO is supported by the Drosos foundation.

As part of the development of the LABO project, Live Room launched in April 2021 a restricted call for projects to support artistic productions and projects for the development of creative skills among young people for a total amount of € 6,000.

The call for projects was launched on April 2, 2021 for the benefit of member artists and collective partners of the Live Room Project, and closed on Wednesday April 28 after an extension of 5 days from the initial deadline.

Please find the link to the application HERE

After examination of the application files by the project side, the candidates selected for the second round are:

• Generation Z collective for the performing arts – contemporary dance piece “14 Km”
• Yasmina Johaimane for the project to create an Anime and Asian cultural club at LABO
• Mehdi Nabil for the short film “Blades of passion”
• Barlaman crew collective for the production of a shadow effect show

The participants will pitch their project live in front of the selection committee on Friday May 7 to finally select two projects for a maximum grant of 3000 € each. The winners of the grant will be announced on Tuesday 18 Mai in our website and social media.

A second call for the project, this time open for public, will be launched in October 2021.

For more information about live room activities and events, please subscribe to our NEWSLETTER.