After five months of the Launching of LABO project, here we came to the day we all have been working for. The day that we received the participants of seven LABO programs (participants of music program will start in February):

• Theater program for youths 25<yr<14
• Dance program for youth 25<yr<16
• Street Art program for youth 25<yr<16
• Circus Arts program for kids 14<yr<10
• Drawing and handcraft program for kids 16<yr<10
• Writing and Spoken words program for kids 14<yr<10
• Audio Video and VR program for kids 16<yr<10

See video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSuK1qOhl30&t=2s

The team worked hard to prepare the space and the necessary equipment for the launching of the activity even if the finishing and decorating works are still going. On the other hand, the executive team of Live Room has been preparing the organization of the processes with the managers (and first coaches) for two weeks. We created an amazing team!

The first session was all about networking and knowing better each other’s. After the welcoming words, we concentrate on the motivational part by exhibiting the history of Live Room Project, our realizations and the fixed goal. We also shared with them the vision we want to build in LABO during the next four years: “We are not a school. LABO is a space for artistic experimentation and production. Our goal is not to teach you, but to improve our creative skills. Five years ago, in the start of Live Room Project we took the slogan “Rise of Art” as our vision. With LABO we fixed a new one: Live is Life! Let’s work all together to study and explore live human expression. Now we all become LABO team. Let’s have fun!”

Finally, the participants joined their coaches to talk specifically about each program and to create their respective agenda. Can’t be more excited to see the result of LABO programs.

Live is Life!

By Omar Mok’s – Tangier.

Nothing can be more exciting than living once again the beautiful moments that the Urban Art Week Festival offers, especially during these long hard times. Surely not as much as we did in the past three editions because this year, we were forced to reduce our activities and our audience because of the sanitary situation, but still, we feel proud to could go ahead with the festival which included three offline events and two online ones.

After postponing the 4^th edition of Urban Art Week Fest to November 14^th,  the program began with a Dance competition of the north organized by Live Room’s LABO center. Six dance crews compete in front of our jury and guests, and the final battle was between Barlaman Crew from Tangier and a mixed group that contains members from Tangier and Tetouan where Barlaman Crew won the first prize. The event was also an opportunity to test our capacity to hold an event with the new social distancing recommendations and to start reinventing new space concept for it.

Two online competitions were launched in our social media platforms just after the Dance event. The first one concerns itself with a digital Rap competition for people from the north where we invented the hash tag #noclashchallenge. The second online competition was about the creation of a digital Comic competition under the theme “A parallel world challenging corona”. Two prizes were offered for the winners. The first winner was chosen by our jury and the second one won by our user’s votes. The anecdote we had is that both competitions had one winner for both prizes (jury and votes). Maybe it proved that the jury did a great job :p  Congratulations to Nizar and Hamza.

#NOCLASHCHALLENGE was very successful in terms of the number of participants (40 rappers) and audience engagement while #POSTCORONACOMICSCHALLENGE knew only the participation of 5 artists who amazed us with their creativity and drawings. However, the challenge proves that Comics discipline needs more support from us.

As we used to offer the citizens of Tangier city every year, a Street Art mural, this year we continued this edition with another collective artwork. We regrouped 3 street artists: Sako, Nouh and Ilyas.  The Street Art mural was under the theme “Post corona: a world more digital than ever” were we wanted to talk to kids and parents about the importance of technology in the near future. The action took 4 days and it was an opportunity for young street artists to come assist the team and participate in a live workshop.

To watch streert art mural report done by local news media  9 Avril: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWWgyFIhqb4&feature=emb_title

The festival closed its activities with two skateboarding competitions in the Sahat Spot. Live Room had the honor to be the first one to organize a Game of Skate and Best Skate Trick battle in Tangier with the help of TNG Extreme association. We really had good time watching those young participants competing and enjoying their times. Congratulations to Reda and Achraf.

Finally, we would like to thank every supporter and participant in the 4^th edition of Urban Art Week Fest. Special thanks to everybody who was there, who shared, liked or commented. Big UP to our dear team, juries and friends who helped in organizing the event. Without you all, this event wouldn’t have been that successful. Last but not least, we would like to express our special thanks to our partners for this edition: American Language Center of Tangier and French Embassy of Morocco.

Thank you too dear reader! See you next event 😊

The Coronavirus crisis has deeply affected both the cultural and artistic sectors and more specifically the organization of events; the Live Room Project is no exception. Due to the pandemic, many programs were canceled particularly two episodes of the interactive series BlaBla + (March and June), an Artistic Meeting (April), the Ramadan Show (May) and the fourth edition of the Urban Art Week festival (July).

The 4th edition of Urban Art Week Fest is postponed

We are following the situation with the greatest possible attention. Sadly, the situation in Morocco is not promising. Because of these circumstances, we cannot resume activities in direct contact with the public until next September. In meanwhile, we are hoping to maintain the festival UAW going. In an article subsequent to this one, we explained why we preferred not to embark on digital actions due to the lack of our current resources; the thing that will prevent us from achieving the satisfaction and objectives set for the actions. The association preferred to benefit from lockdown to enhance the activities in order to get ready for the upcoming project and which will see the birth of a physical management center and LABO activity.

But the debate never stopped for the Urban Art Week Tangier Festival. Our artists keep on making the event happen. So, we thought about a 100% digital solution which was to organize the festival only on our social networking sites and focus on digital competitions (digital comics and drawings), individual urban dance, Graffiti sketching, Rap, and Beatbox that our followers can watch and vote on Instagram & Facebook. Before taking the decision and discussing it with the sponsors, we launched a survey with our users to see whether they prefer making a digital edition or postpone it until school entrance to coincide with the opening of the LABO space. The result was sharp.  More than 70% voted for postponing the event in order to maintain physical participation.

We thank you for your confidence and we promise to get back to you more productive and more crazy and funny than ever!

Stay tuned for more updates.

One Love.