CHIMERA Fest
Itinerari Paralleli ETS
Italy
Chimera Fest is a bottom-up cultural festival that takes place in the medieval village of Casertavecchia, near Caserta (South Italy). It is a three days format with a programme of events intertwining different disciplines: music, literature, performance, art, audio-visual, gastronomy. Its relevancy consists in being an ongoing process that involves community through culture, opening dialogues on urgent issues like: sustainability, accessibility, equality. Not just as topics but also as practices, in a context that lacks possibilities, cultural policies, institutional support and vision.
Chimera Fest is one of the main actions in the cultural-led territorial development project that Itinerari Paralleli ETS brings on in the medieval village of Casertavecchia since 2018. It takes place over three days hosting a programme made of: concerts, workshops, landscape explorations, exhibitions, tastings, screenings. On one hand it challenges the context through a program that open dialogues and vision on urgent topic with national and international hosts (which is a rare occasion in South of Italy), on the other hand it co-creates moments and contents involving the local community, specifically: minorities (last year we worked with blind people), young people and associations. Chimera Fest shares changemaking practices, addressing sustainability and accessibility as core values. Moreover, it uses different locations in the village, giving citizens access to historical locations usually closed. It also represents a possibility for local artists, creatives and designers to display their work thanks to open calls through which we organize exhibitions and markets. For this year's edition Chimera will keep working in this direction, reaffirming the importance of the project.