KUMELÉN: Solidarity culture in motion

« Kumelén » is a Mapuche word that means « to be happy ». 

Our meaning and our objectives are oriented towards this: to be happy doing what we love but not alone. We are a Civil Association, oriented to cultural, artistic and social productions, with a mobilizing, cooperative and solidary sense. 

Our history starts in 1988 in Carlos Pellegrini, Santa Fe, Argentina. There, a group of young people from the town wanted to « change something ». From that moment until today, our way of organising ourselves has been changing, as we have been expanding and creating new spaces to develop. We are not the same, we have given greater firmness, quality and clarity to the same search: that the cultures of our communities change and that we can discuss what is established so that the opening is dynamic and in accordance with the needs for change that we collectively feel. To experience growth not as a straight line towards an undisputed place of success, but rather as an experience that speaks of attempts, of experiences, of doubts rather than certainties, of social structures and practices that we must revise and move.

The accent is placed on collective construction as a cause and consequence of individual growth, of the empowerment of qualities, of being in movement, building something that doesn’t stop, because that is its essence.

We have four theatres in four localities in the centre-west of the province of Santa Fe: Carlos Pellegrini, Piamonte, El Trébol and Cañada Rosquín. All of them are made in spaces recovered by ourselves.

In the four spaces, we programme different artistic activities, alternating our own productions with those of other groups. They are training spaces for more than one thousand two hundred people, from children to seniors; open to the community, to all institutions, as well as to other independent groups that request them.

Our biggest production is <<La Fiesta Nacional de las Culturas >>, which we build together with the << Club San Martín >> of Carlos Pellegrini. We start every mid-December and close in mid-January in the club’s park. This celebration promotes and gives place to a great number of artists from different parts of the country to express themselves, meet and fraternise, making the Fiesta Nacional de las Culturas, a festival for the soul.

In Kumelén we don’t want anything for ourselves that is not for everyone.