Artlife Matters signs a 5-year partnership with Italian Art and Culture Institutions to strengthen cultural and artistic ties.
In the photo, from left: Luigi De Luca, Director of the Lecce Library and Museum Centre, Eric Agyare, Director and Founder of Artlife Matters; Ada Facchini, Head of the Kora Library, Paolo Mele, Director of Ramdom and Kora
A collaboration agreement was signed at KORA—Centro del Contemporaneo in Castrignano de’ Greci between the Library and Museum Centre of Lecce, the artistic production and social promotion association Ramdom APS, and Artlife Matters LGB, an organisation based in Accra (Ghana) that promotes art as a tool for social, cultural, and economic development, starting from the Ghanaian and African territories.
The agreement aims to promote cooperation, intercultural dialogue, and exchange between the signatories. The tangible and intangible heritage of the places, reinterpreted through various artistic and cultural languages, is the symbolic space common to the three pillars of which the agreement will find its concrete application through libraries and museums.
Eric Agyare is the director and founder of Artlife Matters, the organisation that has among its goals the construction of bridges that connect the creatives of West Africa to the rest of the world. In addition to promoting artists, the association also offers educational and mentoring courses aimed at communities, families, and students to address educational poverty concerning professional opportunities—and to overcome limits and boundaries—in the field of culture and innovation. From February to July 2024, Eric was a guest of KORA in the Erasmus Young Entrepreneurs program. He researched projects on the creative and management skills of sustainable artistic and cultural enterprises in different territories.
The Library and Museum Centre of Lecce has accepted the proposal for collaboration from Ramdom and Artlife Matters to start a process of co-design and international cooperation focused on strengthening the skills of professionals working in the museum and library sector, and for the creation of continuous exchanges. The arts and various languages will be the mediation tool for the tangible and intangible heritage of communities and the values of sustainability, fostering a public conscience based on civic sense, international solidarity, respect for nature, peace, and the pursuit of the objectives of Agenda 2030. The projects to be developed will include “mobility initiatives aimed at promoting mutual understanding and dialogue in the logic of cultural contamination and exchange of artistic experiences, to promote the development and ability to access materials, equipment, and know-how in the field of contemporary art, in places where they are absent or insufficient.”
The Lecce Library and Museum Centre is part of the regional management system of museums, libraries, and cultural sites in the Puglia Region, a system capable of communicating with the peripheral structures of the State in the field of cultural heritage, of standardising service standards, and of valorizing the great heritage of goods, knowledge, and experiences of the provinces and municipalities of Puglia in a single and coordinated policy of enhancement and enjoyment. The structure of the Centre includes the Castromediano Museum, the oldest public museum in Puglia, with its archaeological and historical-artistic collection, the former Convitto G. Palmieri, home to the N. Bernardini Library, and the Palazzo Girolamo Comi (house museum) in Lucugnano (Le).
Ramdom is an APS that deals with cultural and artistic production of national and international scope. Since July 2021, it has managed KORA, a multidisciplinary production and research centre on the contemporary. Ramdom has won several editions of the Italian Council with projects by Emilio Vavarella (2019), Céline Condorelli (2020), Luigi Coppola (2021), Lucia Veronesi (2023), and Flatform (2024). Since 2022, Ramdom has been recognized by the three-year FUS 2022-24 music sector with the project Ogni Altro Suono. Ramdom is among the founding members of STARE, a network of Italian residences, and a member of the European networks ENCC and Res Artis.
KORA – Centro del Contemporaneo is a cultural redevelopment and enhancement project of a historic asset, the Palazzo baronale de Gualtieris, located in Castrignano de’ Greci, a small village in Grecìa Salentina with about 3,800 inhabitants in the province of Lecce. KORA is a place of production and research on contemporary themes that hosts temporary and permanent exhibitions, workshops, training, conferences, events, performances, and live shows. It is a multidisciplinary space that houses the Public Museum of Contemporary Art, with its specialised library Mediateca di Ramdom – Osservatorio sulle Terre Estreme, and the Municipal Library, as well as an info point, a bookshop, and a bar.
Artlife Matters (ALM) is an organisation that promotes art as an essential development tool for social, cultural, and economic transformation. Founded in Ghana in 2019, the organisation has been involved in local and international projects that significantly impact new narratives of culture and support and promote creatives, starting from the African territory and creating bridges and exchanges around the world. Artlife Matters prioritises the empowerment of communities with art as a catalyst for social, cultural, and economic transformation. Among the projects supported, ALM has collaborated with Uplift Aerospace on a journey into the outer space of Amoako Boafo artworks (2020) and with Samsung Art Store to generate revenue for local artists (2021). ALM has produced exhibitions and project-managed festivals both locally and internationally. It carries out the Artitude project (Est 2019), which has reached over five thousand young creatives, alongside many other initiatives and activities that support the growing creative sector in the African territory.
