Qatar further stamped its mark in defending freedom and promoting the arts as it reaches out to the world with the message of underscoring the link between freedom and creativity by staging events in various countries in the coming months. Mohsen Marzouk, Executive Secretary General of Arab Democracy Foundation, one of the organisers of the Doha Freedom and Creativity Festival, said that for the first time a festival on freedom and creativity will be travelling to different countries, during a press conference at the conclusion of the four-day festival yesterday. “We want to announce that after this festival we are conducting events in some capitals. The first one is in Paris at the end of this month and these events would be an echo of this festival,” said Marzouk. The idea of the series of events is to bring the main message of the festival — the link between freedom and creativity — to other countries. “What we want to do is to create a coalition between artists and democracy artists, because we want to enlarge the network of democracy defenders to give more chance for the cause of freedom in this region to prevail,” explained Marzouk. “Our focus is the region and our goal is to transform the current political groups in the region into social movements. We feel that the artists are agents of change and we want our message to reach more and more Arabs,” he added. Though there would be events in different capitals, mainly in the Arab region, the main hub is the Doha festival. Activities would include samples from the current festival such as music, poetry and theatre. The festival in Paris which would mainly be about music would last for two days. In Beirut it would last for four days because it would use cinmea to convey its message. The performers would be a mix of Arab and local performers who should be defenders of freedom, said Marzouk, adding roundtables on creativity in the Arab region would also be organised. “It’s not art for art or art for business, it’s art with a message,” Marzouk emphasised, adding through the events they would like to invite more and more from the Arab population to be optimistic on the issue of freedom through the arts. “We do think that democracy is also about beauty, and through their interlink we would be able to touch the depth of our culture,” he said. The recently concluded Doha Freedom and Creativity Festival included cinema, caricature and painting exhibition, a traditional music performance, lecture on freedom and creativity in arts and poetry session. http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=Local%5FNews&subsection=Qatar+News&month=April2009&file=Local_News2009041322536.xml

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