Promote the arts and cultures
Programme, produce and support events that give a stage to women creators from Africa and its diasporas.
Dakar, Senegal
Women,
Women,
their works,
the arts in motion.
Les Cultur'Elles is an organisation committed to promoting the arts, cultures and the creative industries, with particular attention to the voices, talents and initiatives of women.
3Projects run
5Editions of the Fair
120+Authors hosted
18Countries represented
Who we are
An organisation born of a conviction
Les Cultur'Elles works to bring artistic and cultural expression into the light, while advancing recognition for the women who create, write and lead in the cultural and creative industries.
From literature to the visual arts, from training to the writing residency, we build spaces where women write, exhibit, teach and decide. Every project answers the same question: what does a woman creator actually need in order to find her audience, her place and her means?
Our vision
A cultural landscape where work made by women is no longer a separate category, but an economic, artistic and public given.
Our values
- Artistic rigour above all
- Transmission between generations
- Pan African roots, open to the world
- Independence of the creator's voice
- Seriousness in how projects are run
We too, as women, can tell our version of history in our own words, drawing on what we feel and what we have achieved.
Those words rang out in me when, my eyes full of pride, I watched these women present their work and bring this space of exchange to life.
Amina Seck, founder
Our projects
Three organisations, one standard
A literary fair, an international gathering and a school.
Each answers a different moment in a creator's path.
Dakar Women's Book Fair
Three days of talks, workshops and readings around women's writing. A guest country, a guest of honour, a pop up bookshop.
Explore the FairInternational Women in the Arts Symposium
A professional gathering bringing artists, researchers and institutions together around the place of women in the performing, visual and digital arts.
Explore the SymposiumCFFAC School
A training centre opening the technical, artistic and administrative crafts of culture to women and girls.
Explore the school
Our missions
What we actually do
Six lines of work that shape everything we do, from the largest event to the smallest workshop.
Advance the creative industries
Treat culture as an economic sector: structure, professionalisation, access to markets and to funding.
Champion women's writing
Get women's writing read, circulated and recognised, from the classics to the voices emerging now.
Train and pass on
Open the crafts of arts and culture to women and girls, through training, workshops and mentoring.
Support creation
Give writers the time, the setting and the editorial support a finished work requires.
Bring people together
Unite institutions, publishers, media and cultural centres around shared and lasting projects.
Residency
Creative writing residency
The long stretch of time without which no work gets finished.
The creative writing residency supports authors in a setting made for reflection, experiment and literary production, helping new voices emerge.
For several weeks, the selected authors are given a place, protected time and editorial support. The resulting texts are worked through to publication and presented at the Dakar Women's Book Fair.
How it works
- Open to authors from Africa and its diasporas
- Selection on application and on the text itself
- Accommodation, editorial support and a creation grant
- Public reading and publication of the stories
Partners
We never work alone
Les Cultur'Elles builds its projects with cultural institutions, publishers, media and training centres, in Senegal and internationally.
- Cultural institutions
- Publishing houses
- Cultural centres
- Cultural media
- Local authorities
- Patrons and foundations
Contact
Let us work together
Author, artist, partner, patron or journalist: write to us. We answer every serious proposal.
Call
Find us
Sacré Cœur 3, Dakar, Senegal
Keep in touch
Our calls for applications, in your inbox
Residencies, workshops, symposium, book fair: hear about them the moment they open.
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