Prometeo

The Corporacion de Arte y Poesia Prometeo (Prometeo for short), based in the Colombian city of Medellín, has been a partner organization in the field of Arts and Culture since 1999. As a consequence of the many drug cartels and the struggle between the guerrilla movement FARC, the national army and paramilitaries, this metropolis is one of the poorest and most violent places on earth. In this darkness, Prometeo creates space for poetry, for example with the International Poetry School, its magazine Prometeo and the Gulliver Project: poetry workshops for children from poor urban neighbourhoods.

The organization is best known for its annual International Poetry Festival of Medellín, which it has organized since 1991. At this ten-day event, Prometeo brings in poets from around the world to present their poetry in parks, shopping centres, metro stations, factories, churches, prisons and simply in the streets. The initiative has now spread to some twenty cities in Colombia.

The poetry festival is a shining example both within Latin America and beyond,’ says Hivos employee Tanja Vranic. ‘It is a unique way of mobilising people in a peaceful manner, of creating space for freedom of expression, and of creating networks between poets from all over the world.’ This project won the Hivos Culture Fund Award in 2005 and the Right Livelihood Award in 2006 – a prize for visionary initiatives that benefit public well-being.

The Colombian poet Fernando Rendón is one of the key people of Prometeo and the spiritual father of the poetry festival. ‘Creative imagination and artistic dialogue provide a counterweight for the strangling nightmare of violence,’ he asserts. ‘The age-old culture of death and destruction is now maintained by an authoritarian government that mainly invests in its military struggle, with little respect for freedom of thought, congregation or expression. Prometeo devotes itself to these freedoms, which are essential for creating a world in which justice, beauty, solidarity and life – not death – are central.