“I wish that Moving Center will not only please people – it will immensely enrich their lives.”
Ivan Klima
The Moving Center Foundation (Moving Center Nadační fond) aims to foster creative literary exchanges and the rediscovery of literature as a communicative art form connecting Central European countries together and with the broader world. Launching the annual Moving Center Literary Festival and planting a forest of Poetrees around the world, we promote cooperation between cultural institutions, writers, and readers. (Poetrees are interactive literary sculptures. Extending the typical boundaries of verbal exchange, Poetrees remind us that carefully articulated words carry not only information, they carry hope.)
Incorporating readings, panel discussions and workshops, our annual Moving Center Literary Festival is for people with established interests in literature as well as people more typically left out of “intellectual” spheres. For example, the festival will include concerts of music by songwriters whose lyrics have literary merit and films on literary subjects with youth friendly appeal.
Keying in on Central European writers. The festival will invite at least one prominent writer/singer from further abroad to participate. By having a “bigger name” internationally known artist on the program, attention will be brought to the efforts of up-and-coming voices too.
Each of the participating countries will be invited to present the work of a neglected writer, championed by a prominent writer chosen to assist in advocating them either through written prefaces or live presentations. A selection of work from these hitherto “lost voices” will be published in five languages (German, Polish, Czech, Hungarian and English) in time for distribution at the annual festivals.
Through both Poetrees and our festival, Moving Center aims to open new, productive spaces for literature that tackle today’s most pressing issues. Focus will be placed upon questions of audience and identity, alongside those losses and gains in freedom of expression that come from leaving one’s homeland, voluntarily or involuntarily. Central Europe will thus become a synthesized place from which the flame of literature provides warmth and illumination.
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If you would like to contribute to Moving Center, either as a sponsor or as a volunteer, please contact us through our mail address.
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