“It is likely that the health constraints in effect until October 31 will extend several months beyond. Therefore, it has become imperative to take this reality into account, to adapt to it and to anticipate the future (…). This is why the organizers have chosen to focus their reflection and their action on a project embodying the event in two complementary stages ”, announced the protest on Wednesday.
The question of maintaining the event burned on all the lips of enthusiasts of the ninth art. In a revised version, the 48th edition will take place in two parts: “A first step on the dates initially planned for the event from January 28 to 31,” specify the organizers. By “event”, we mean both a demonstration in Angoulême and achievements “outside the walls” – responding to the contingencies in force imposed by the pandemic. “
Solidarity act
Exhibitions, meetings, awards ceremony … Nothing has been revealed on the content of this particular edition which will be refined over the coming weeks. As for the second act of the festival, it would take place between spring and summer 2021, the dates not yet determined, subject to the uncertainty of the evolution of the pandemic: “A second step will see the Festival shift its face-to-face form, no doubt partly readapted. Its vocation will be to bring together the largest possible audience – while expecting a relaxation of current health rules.»
Like BD in Bastia or Printemps de Bourges, for music, the maintenance of the festival is an act of resistance and solidarity towards the cultural sector particularly battered by the health crisis: “The Festival, thus redesigned in two stages, aims more than ever to involve all the usual stakeholders of the event: authors, publishers, public and private partners, the media, and all the players in the book chain. It will be built with them in the context of a solidarity commitment as required by the situation ”, the organizers pride themselves.
Before adding: “In these times when culture is resisting from all sides to remain the major component that it is and must be in our lives, the festival’s vocation is to get involved, in its place and with its potential, in the aim to be again and always a mediator encouraging more than ever to meet the 9e art and the public. ”
A major annual meeting for lovers of the 9th Art, the festival elected last year, Emmanuel Guibert Grand Prix, who we hope will, as tradition demands, be honored with an exhibition in the Angoumois city.
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