Shady Rabhi

It’s nice to dream, and within dreams we look for what we are not able to find in reality. And through imagination we start getting inspired, giving birth to art. Art is the tool we use to express ourselves, to love, to move, to protest, to make things happen.

In Kasserine, my hometown in Tunisia, many youngsters chose art as the most powerful weapon: photography, theatre, poetry, movie making, rap… they are all tools to fight and to try to improve our reality by denouncing violence, corruption, inequality, pollution, and many other issues affecting our society.

This movement is having completely unexpected results: it is diffusing and developing a structured, unified and powerful network, which is able to address needs, messages and ambitions of youngsters – a mission that the political class is totally missing and ignoring.

Ghawth Zorgui is a 28-year-old guy native from Kasserine, drama teacher at the college of Cité Ennour. Drama is a subject seldom taught in the region. And Ghwth is among those young dreamers who decided to further follow their passion. He understood that his mission in Kasserine is crucial, and that by teaching drama and spreading out the importance of art and theatre he can help youngsters in facing all forms of injustice they are surrounded by.

Among difficulties and challenges encountered by Ghawth and other artists, the worst is the absence of cultural spaces. The need of ensuring some public spaces to perform cultural activities was urgent, so the innovative idea has been the transformation of an old building belonging to the Ministry of Culture in a theatre. Step by step, this cultural space improved, and citizens started feeling the presence of a cultural life in Kasserine.

From this story we learnt that the change is possible if there is the will to cut off discrimination and dictatorship ghosts, who kill our culture and freedom of expression.

Shady Rabhi

The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the author, and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of ALDA and the European Union.