Whether they are citizens of Tunisia , of Egypt , of Syria , of Spain , of Italy , or of Portugal , participants find themselves speaking one common language for the ten glorious days of the festival – the language of poetry, music, cinema, and art.

Born in 1995 in cooperation with the JCE of Kairouan, the festival organizers formed a formal association on September 30, 2000 (JORT No. 21.01.2001).

Although at the beginning the committee was fueled mainly by the passion and conviction of its founding members, it began growing in January 2004 and today comprises ten permanent members, all having the same love of fiction, art, and poetry.

Ever since, the committee has continued to do its work with admirable brio and determination.

The festival is sponsored by the Minister of Culture's Historical Preservation effort, and continues to mature as it attracts greater and greater international attention.

The ongoing goal of the committee is to involve more and more artists and writers, and to reach an ever-larger audience, hopefully one that will include a growing number of students.

At the present time, it is hoped that the steering committee will address the following areas :

• Judicious and collegiate choices that address present needs and realities as well as the expectations of its members, donors, and supporters.
• Respect for the principles of coherence and transparency, with an aim to improving internal procedures, implementing strategic planning, and adopting means of quality and risk assessments.
• Accountability at different levels of decision making, and the involvement of all members, each one a volunteer and a donor of his time and work.
• The establishment of an executive structure with the naming of a director with wide powers and a treasurer to be designated either by donors/volunteers, or by public authorities.
• The establishment of independent control of internal affairs (internal auditors, auditing committees, including donor-appointed regulators, etc.).
• The creation of rules to regulate members of the governing body, the duration of their mandate, to determine their aptitude to sit on the body, and the roles incumbent upon them.

Mohamed Rebai
info@kairouan.org

Founding Members :

• Abdeljelil BOUGUERRA
• Moncef LOUHAIBI
• Hamadi LOUHAIBI
• Badreddine BEN SAID
• Mohamed SAHBI ALLANI

The Governing Body (AGO, 29.01.2004) 

• Hamadi LOUHAIBI-President
• Abdeljelil BOUGUERRA-Past-President
• Moncef LOUHAIBI-Vice-President
• Mohamed Mehdi MAGHDOUD-Secretary- General
• Khaled ALLANI-Deputy-SG
• Mohamed Sahbi ALLANI-Treasurer
• Mondher CHAFRA-Deputy-Treasurer
• Hamida HALIOUI-Member
• Amor AIFA KRAIEM-Member
• Badreddine BEN SAID-Member

Last April 9-16, prestigious Kairouan celebrated her 11th Spring Arts Festival. Theatre, music, cinema, photography, round table discussions, and poetry readings brought together artists and thinkers from many different latitudes, as well as a public interested in the theme “Art and Heritage.”

Kairouan, the ancient city of the Aghlabides, fascinated Paul Klee who, while visiting here in 1914, noted in his diary, “Color possesses me. […] I am a painter.” *

Poet and plastic artist Catherine Stoll-Simon was struck by the light of the town, a luminescence that after the grey, eternal winters of Europe , is a delight to the eye of the artist. Stoll-Simon also describes a too-brief visit to Kairouan's Grande Mosque on her way to Tunis from the south, and noted that Kairouan is “the most intensely Arab city of Tunisia ,” an inner sanctuary that protectively folds itself around its many treasures.*

Leaving Paris and its never-ending winter, I greatly looked forward to the light that, in the narrow alleys of the Medina, had so enchanted the master of polyphonic painting. But an unusual seasonal meteorological phenomenon ensued a few weeks before the festival of Mouled, the "anniversary of the birth of the Prophet, and the Holy city found itself enveloped by mist and cold, thus thwarting our hopes of admiring it in all the luminous splendor of its legend.

On April 9, 2005, the Festival was a far cry from remembrances of grey sky and cold temperatures. Instead, the city vibrated with the conviviality of meetings and exchanges that, with each succeeding year, continue to bring together poets, painters, artists of all types, sculptors, photographers, musicians and actors. Many are from Tunisia , but others come from other banks of the Mediterranean ; still others from countries still further away.

Born of the determination of a group of Tunisian artists to open dialogues of culture, identity, and discovery, the Festival has always attracted individuals of phenomenal talent and renown. This year's event included poets such as Adonis, Mohamed Bennis, Nizar Kabbani, André du Bouchet Bernard Noel, Guillevic, and numerous grand names of Arabic cinema such as Yousra or Kemel Chennaoui.

“Our aim is to culturally open the city of Kairouan through a wide inclusion of all the arts,” declared Festival president Hamadi Louhaibi who recently succeeded Abdeljelil Bouguerra, and who – appropriately enough -- is himself a Professor of Performing Arts at the University of Kairouan . At one and the same time author, film maker, and actor, this versatile individual, who also enjoys a parallel career as a star of television and film, aims to bridge tradition and modernism in the arts of the ancient Sahelian capital.

An enthusiastic crowd applauded the festival. People came for the films of Raghda, venerated star of Syrian-Egyptian cinema and spokesman for the children of Iraq to whom he recently dedicated a documentary. The audience also came to see the many plays, including a very free interpretation of Molière's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme .

The Sidi Abid Mausoleum, built in the 14 th Century and today the seat of the Association to Save the Medina, was the sumptuous scene of Euro-Arabian and Tunisian poetry-reading soirees.

The Arab-Andalousian patio echoed with a chorus of different languages: Arabic, French, German, and Portuguese. The poetry of numerous Syrian writers, among them Shaher Khadra whose work Selected Poems, translated into French by Hedi Khelil and recently published by editions Harmattan, Yemen's Abdelkader Al Hossni, and others from Lebanon, Qatar, Switzerland (notably Ingrid Fichtner and Johanna Lier), Portugal (Rosa Lisa Branco), and France (Yves Mézières and Catherine Stoll-Simon) was heard and applauded.

The Master of Ceremonies was Mohamed Ghozzi, Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Tunis , and noted founder of the “ School of Kairouan ” who, in the 1970s, together with other regional poets such as Moncef Louhaibi, reacted to the prevailing unilaterally ideological poetry with the creation of texts inspired by Soufie tradition.

The Festival has the mission to awaken the sense of heaven in each of us, to paraphrase Malarmé. That aim was also expressed by the works of Saint John Perse and those of Rimbaud which, translated into Arabic, were thus able to reach and touch the hearts of a new and much larger audience on this side of the Mediterranean .

*Paul Klee. TravelsinTunisia
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/199103/travels.in.tunisia.htm Accessed September 5 , 2007.

*Catherine Stoll-Simon, Paris , July 17, 2005. Stoll-Simon's recent Gout de lumière in a bilingual edition, has been published by the Maison de Poésie de Tunis .