Med’action

Blue Future

Blue Future (Mosta’abal Azraq Wahed) is a French-Egyptian project imagined by Banlastic (Alexandria) and Les Têtes de l’Art (Marseille) associations. The project responds to the urgent necessity to act against plastic proliferation in the Mediterranean: its implementation will allow to establish links between collected waste -during cleaning actions on beaches in the frame of the yearly environmental festival activities -, categorize them and contribute to this field research.

To the end, this data will help to define measures for plastic pollution reduction to deal at a local, national and international level.

This project is declining in 7 activities managed in 2022-2023 in three trends: research, creation of measuring tools and implementation of cleaning actions.

Program

24th and 25th of May 2022

Co-creation lab from 5:00pm to 7:30pm :

A co-creation lab has been organized on line the 24th and 25th of May 2022 from 5:00pm to 7:30pm.

These meetings allow exchanges between activists and scientists from Egypt, France, Lebanon, Algeria and other Mediterranean countries in order to establish a stock of the situation about coastal and navy pollution in the Mediterranean. Present associations and activists will identify what are their needs in order to improve the fight against Mediterranean sea pollution and actively take part in the drawing up of research criteria and/or sharing of data collection tools. During these exchanges, proposals can be done in the frame of simultaneous action participation in the Mediterranean next October.

24th of May: plastic pollution in the Mediterranean sea: sharing of expertise by Egyptian and French scientists.

25th of May: actions managed for environmental protection: presentation by our activist associates, two data collection tools by our associative associates and collective thinkings about improvements to give in actions and adaptation of the tools.

end of June 2022

Action-research

Three French structure representatives (Les Têtes de l’Art, MerTerre and Plastic Odyssey) meet local Egyptian authorities leaders to establish an action plan that includes ideas suggested by co-creation lab participants. A definitive frame will be made about the structure of the research to lead.

June-September 2022

Local meetings

Local meetings to prepare and monitor (festival) environmental actions that will take place in October.

17th to 26th of October 2022

Festival for environment

A major action of awareness (cleaning and artistic activities, workshops, conferences, etc.) will simultaneously take place online and in 14 countries around the Mediterranean, in partnership with AJCM CMJ and Art for Clim’Act. This event will be the opportunity to test our data collection tools and reunite several associations and activists around a collective action in order to have more impact and visibility.

October to November 2022

Result analysis

Analysis of collected data for advocacy.

November 2022 to January 2023

Sharing and dissemination

of the results in the Mediterranean and Marseille with visit and participation of Egyptian associates.

Organizers

Since 1996, Les Têtes de l’Art association enhances and stimulates artistic participating practices by committing in culture, popular education and social and solidarity economic sectors with transversality. By basing on a wide network of intervening artists, the association builds artistic participating projects by popular request. Finally, they take a stand for their members by support, training or equipment loan services. The association is rooted in the PACA region, but is very open too in the world and ever more exchanges with peers in France, Europe and around the Mediterranean in order everywhere a new optimism emerges.

Banlastic Egypt is a social enterprise that was founded in June 2018 in Alexandria, Egypt by 3 co-founders from diverse backgrounds uniting for a common cause to ”ban single-use plastic”. Banlastic works on this by producing and developing alternatives to single-use plastic, conducting workshops, creating eco-friendly workspaces and organising beach clean-ups and green events to raise awareness. Banlastic also connects with policymakers in aims to implement plastic ban policies.

MerTerre is a French association specialized for more than 20 years in the reduction of litter ending-up at sea. Our goal is to protect the ecosystems and the climate with the help of any type of actors involved on the matter. With an approach based on participatory sciences, we are accompanying and coordinating a wide network of people organizing cleanups and characterizing litter using the same protocols. The analyze of the data collected allow us to raise awareness and create targeted action plans with a complementary curative/preventive approach. To collaborate, share the knowledge and centralize the data, we have created a national collaborative web platform ‘Zéro Déchet Sauvage’ (with its Mediterranean antenna ‘ReMed Zero Plastique’) in collaboration with the French National History Museum and officially supported by the Region Sud and the French Ministry of Transition.

El Shagara El Tayeba: The Tree Foundation for Development and Art is the first cultural youth institution in North Sinai that was launched in 2016 with the aim of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. We seek to provide community initiatives in accordance with community needs through partnerships with common goals that include nearly 100 volunteers, and we are working to qualify young people, children and women to become their safest and most breathable platform to achieve their goals and development ideas after we received the first place of the Excellence Award for civil society organizations.

Greenish is an Egyptian organization founded in 2017 to raise awareness about the environmental issues facing Egyptian local communities and offer solutions through art, capacity building, and awareness campaigns. We aim to achieve sustainable development through interactive educational activities, environmental assessment services, and providing support to local communities vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. Vision: To improve the wellbeing of MENA residents and the health of their natural environment through sustainable and conscious practices Mission: Promote environmentally-conscious practices through environmental education, partnerships, research and advocacy.

Alexandria University -architecture department of the Faculty of Fine Arts- is one of the most distinguished university institutions in the Arab world in the fields of education, research, and sociology. Building human cadres capable of assimilating and dealing with the requirements of the age and rapid technological developments by activating quality systems for graduates to achieve excellence in the areas of research and artistic and plastic creativity, which contribute effectively to the service of society and the development of the environment for obtaining accreditation.

Plastic Odyssey is a 3 years expedition to find solutions against plastic pollution. The expedition is set to leave at the end of year 2022, and will start its journey around the Mediterranean, the most polluted sea on earth. Plastic Odyssey Community is developing action programmes on three continents to empower citizens to take action on the plastic crisis:

A mobile exhibition that brings together solutions found around the world to avoid plastic pollution.
Exploration training workshops open to all, to get involved at your own level against plastic pollution.
A humanities research programme to find a way out of our plastic addiction.