Asilah Arts Festival (Morocco): encounters in the urban space

Abstract

This essay aims to present Asilah Arts Festival through its history, program and outcomes, as an interactive platform for international and local cultural interchange and diffusion but especially, as the essential preservative source it still is, particularly regarding the town’s urban and architectural ensemble and the national and international, material and immaterial legacy it celebrates. The methodology for this research combined a critical bibliographical analysis, followed by a three weeks stay in the Moroccan town carrying out fieldwork that included interviews, visits to sites of interest or participation in the event’s activities. The results obtained from this investigation have in this paper been grouped in four sections: “Urban and architectural heritage”, “Cultural heritage”, “Social impact” and “Everyday life”. These tackle how the event affects local economy, contributes to the population’s education, raises awareness towards the importance of the patrimony’s safeguarding or renders explicit the value of the town’s quotidian existence.

Keywords

• festival
• asilah
• intercultural exchange
• heritage preservation