The third Hay Festival Forum Sevilla took place from February 12 to 15, 2025, at various venues in the Andalusian capital. The program included 27 events where topics such as literature, architecture, the environment, and more were discussed.
Event FiltersYou are viewing events filtered byThursday 13 February 2025Reset all filters
Event 2
Journalism Workshop with Helena de Bertodano and Laura Ventura
The magic of a good interview
–
Campus Cámara de Comercio de Sevilla (S/ Isabel, 1)
A good journalist should approach any interview in the same way that Albert Camus approached his urge to write: ‘as if my need were infinite and nothing and no one could satisfy it’. Each question should be a challenge, not to make the interviewer look good or to impress the audience, but rather to allow the interviewee to take us, step by step, into his or her inner world, and reveal what lies beneath. What matters is to engage the interviewee with questions that lead to a coherent story, and that, without fighting with the individual, force him or her to say more than they expected. In this workshop, two renowned journalists will unravel the essentials of a good interview, whether for the traditional paper or digital format, or for social media.
The workshop will be given by Helena de Bertodano and Laura Ventura. De Bertodano is a journalist specialising in celebrity interviews and profiles, as well as features and travel articles for publications such as The Sunday Times, The Times, The Telegraph, The Observer, Harper's Bazaar and Marie Claire. She has interviewed over a thousand people in the last 25 years, including the Dalai Lama, Meryl Streep, George Soros, Ringo Starr, George Best, Yehudi Menuhin and Jacinda Ardern. Laura Ventura holds a PhD in Hispanic Philology from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and teaches Literature at the Universidad Carlos III. She has also written several sections in the Argentine newspaper La Nación for the past two decades. She has interviewed personalities such as Joaquín Sabina, Elena Poniatowska, Paul Auster, Javier Cercas, Pedro Almodóvar, Joan Manuel Serrat, Isabel Allende and Mikhail Baryshnikov, among others.
The young people taking part in the workshop will be able to choose one of the celebrities taking part in Hay Festival Forum Seville, conduct a one-minute interview with them using their mobile phone, and share it on social media.
Event in Spanish
This event has taken place
Co-organized with the Cámara de Comercio de Sevilla
The culture of the Polígono Sur starring young people
Opening ceremony of Hay Festival Forum Seville
–
Biblioteca Pública Infanta Elena - Hemeroteca
The Polígono Sur district of Seville is one of the neighborhoods with the lowest per capita income in Europe. However, many people work to promote the talent of the youngest. Hay Festival Forum Sevilla organizes two events along these lines.
Part One: Flamenco show with young people from the neighborhood. Sponsored by the Alalá Foundation, this is a small flamenco show, where a group of students can express the knowledge acquired in the Foundation's workshops. Dance, singing and percussion will be the main threads of this show. The Alalá Foundation has been working for more than 10 years for the social integration of minors, young people and their families in the neighborhood of Tres Mil Viviendas in Seville and in Estancia Barrera in Jerez. It supports culture, art and sports through free workshops held every week, benefiting 400 direct users.
Part Two: theatrical performance. Encouraging reading among young people and vulnerable groups has an undoubted power of social transformation. In this event, the José Manuel Lara Foundation is carrying out a project -together with the Entreamigos Association- with students from the CEIP Paz y Amistad School, in the Polígono Sur area of Seville. The young people will carry out a dramatization of the book Doiz travels to Earth, a collective work of the students themselves, which talks about respect for the differences of the people around us. The José Manuel Lara Foundation's mission is to contribute to the promotion of reading and support for education. It believes that a child who reads will be a child with more knowledge, more critical, with greater possibilities for the future and, therefore, happier.
Event in Spanish
This event has taken place
Co-organized with the José Manuel Lara Foundation, the Alalá Foundation, the Infanta Elena Public Library and the Junta de Andalucía and the collaboration of the MAPFRE Foundation
Writers have been going to London for centuries, from Europe and beyond. This exhibition reveals how the city has inspired them, bringing to light a Europe and a London of the imagination. It is based on an interactive digital map designed by the European Institute, the Faculty of Arts and the Bartlett Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL, which allows the visitor to explore London from texts written in more than twenty European languages, including Spanish, Catalan and Galician.
Ideas for new passages to include on the map are very welcome. For more information visit www.europeanliterarylondon.org
Inauguration: February 13, 13:30 The exhibition will open from February 13 to March 3
This event has taken place
Organised together with the British Embassy in Spain and Ámbito Cultural de El Corte Inglés
Guided tour of the exhibition of Coro López-Izquierdo
Invisible Architecture
–
Fundación Valentín de Madariaga
Artist and architect Coro López-Izquierdo will give a guided tour of the exhibition Invisible Architecture at the Valentín de Madariaga Foundation. The exhibition invites us to ask ourselves what is the current aesthetic thought through the eyes of eight Spanish artists of great prestige and eight key pieces, unpublished. Visitors will be able to elaborate their own conception of current aesthetics. Dimensional architecture, lyrical architecture, architecture of identity, ethereal architecture, uninhabited architecture, seasonal architecture, architecture of essence and light architecture are the eight installations through which the spectator will make a pilgrimage, each of them offering different views, both sculptural and pictorial, in which color and shapes will surprise as protagonists. Invisible Architecture pays homage to Seville through works never previously exhibited and created expressly for the occasion.
López-Izquierdo is an artist, architect and professor of Architectural Drawing at the ETSEM of the Polytechnic University of Madrid. She has exhibited both nationally (Madrid, Segovia, Bilbao, Cadiz, Gijon) and internationally (Paris, Barbizon, London, Italy and Dominican Republic). She has participated in the art fairs Art Madrid, Estampa, Artesantander, Art Chicago, Art Miami, Art London and KIAF. She was selected as an artist to study in the 2020 course Feminism and Contemporary Art held at the Museo Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo in Madrid.
Event in Spanish. Welcome at 17:50.
This event has taken place
Co-organized with the Valentín de Madariaga Foundation
Susana Martín Gijón and Laura Hojman in conversation
Literature and cinema made in Seville
–
Real Fábrica de Artillería de Sevilla
A Namibian policewoman who lives in Extremadura and investigates crimes of gender violence; it is fiction, but it could very well be reality. The writer Susana Martín Gijón writes crime novels starring women, her great passion, and actively defends women's rights, her great commitment. Her literary career and her profession are intertwined. She is the author of two crime sagas starring Annika Kauda and Camino Vargas. She debuted in 2013 with Más que cuerpos, to which, among others, Náufragos; Expediente Medellín; Planeta, La Babilonia 1580.
Martín Gijón studied law and went on to work as a legal advisor for NGOs, in addition to having been general director of the Youth Institute of Extremadura (2007-2011). She has also collaborated in national and international platforms in defense of gender equality and in the network of Young African and Spanish Women.
Martín Gijón will talk with Laura Hojman from Seville;
Laura Hojman is a screenwriter and film director. She has written and directed the documentary feature films Tierras Solares, Antonio Machado. Los días azules, and A las mujeres de España. María Lejárraga, for which she was nominated for the Goya Awards, Feroz Awards, and Forqué Awards. She was also nominated for these awards for Antonio Machado. Los días azules.
With a degree in Art History and a Master's in Cultural Management, she has been a partner at the independent film production company Summer Films since 2016. Among other accolades, she has received the RTVA Award for Best Filmmaker of Andalusia at the Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival, the ALMA Award from the Spanish Screenwriters’ Guild for Best Documentary Screenplay, the Silver Biznaga Women in Focus Award for Best Feature Film at the Málaga Film Festival, the Carmen Award from the Andalusian Film Academy for Best Documentary, and eight ASECAN Andalusian Film Awards.
Her documentaries have been screened at prestigious national and international festivals such as SEMINCI, the Seville European Film Festival, the Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival, Alcances, and the Málaga Film Festival. After their theatrical release, they have become available on streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Filmin.
She has served as president of AAMMA (Andalusian Association of Women in Audiovisual Media) and is a columnist for *eldiario.es*.
Un hombre libre is her fourth feature film as a director. In this documentary, she revisits the life of exiled writer Agustín Gómez Arcos and, through his story, reflects on Spain’s recent history, memory, and the role of culture in shaping counter-narratives.
Absence as a Stimulus is a new production by National Photography Prize-winner Alberto García-Alix. In the event, designed to be a type of visual conference, the author reflects on how absence, in its existence and as a vitalising stimulus, influences and is reflected in his work, and acts as a guiding thread and catalyst in his photographs. García-Alix presents 68 images, most of them unpublished, taken over the last 15 years, interspersed with his own narrative. The photographer reflects on how absence is present in everything we encounter: in nature, in architecture, in objects and even in portraiture "because something always escapes us from the model". In the words of the author, absence is a stimulus.
Alberto García-Alix was born in León and lived in Madrid from the age of 11. His first images date from the late 1970s. He established himself professionally as a photographer and held his first solo exhibitions in Madrid and London in the 1980s. He gained acclaim at the first edition of PhotoEspaña (1998), and was awarded the National Photography Prize in 1999. He began to work with both photographic and video images at the beginning of the 21st century, exhibiting in some of Spain and Europe's principal galleries and museums, such as the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Photographer's Gallery in London, the Prado Museum, and the Maison Europée de la Photographie in Paris.
The event will be moderated by Dr. Jimena Blázquez Abascal. With a PhD in Contemporary Art, she was director of the Fundación Montenmedio Arte Contemporáneo NMAC in Vejer de la Frontera for 22 years, and now directs the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo. In addition to being a noted art collector, she has curated more than 40 projects by artists such as James Turrell and Marina Abramovic. She received the National Award for Collecting in 2022. At the end of the event, Ricardo León Moro, with long experience in the field of cultural management and exhibition curatorship, will introduce some questions.
Event in Spanish
This event has taken place
Co-organized with the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo and the Junta de Andalucía
Eric Loontjens in conversation with Nuria Canivell, presented by Hannah Schildt
Culture transforms cities
–
Fundación Cajasol - Sala Machado
Cities are undergoing unprecedented transformations that are transforming them, with greater or lesser success, into friendlier and more livable spaces. Better use of natural and energy resources, attention to sustainability and digitalization are elements that seek to meet the needs and demands of citizens; to this is added culture as a dynamic element. The question is whether the efforts are bearing fruit or need to be redoubled.
Eric Loontjens is a member of the Oostkerk Foundation, a cultural organization located in Middelburg, the Netherlands, that is in charge of managing the cultural use of the Oostkerk, an impressive monumental building that is listed among the 100 most important monuments in the Netherlands. This historic church has become a vibrant center for cultural and artistic events in the city. Loontjens will speak about culture and heritage as drivers of social and economic development, focusing on how cultural projects can transform a region by connecting local culture with the international sphere. Besides, he will share his experience in organizing cultural events at historical monuments and the logistical and financial challenges associated with creating large festivals.
The event will be presented by Hannah Schildt, Cultural and Press Attaché at the Embassy of the Netherlands in Spain, and Nuria Canivell, Dean of the College of Architects of Seville.
Schildt has led the Communication and Culture team at the Embassy of the Netherlands since 2020, aiming to foster collaboration between Spanish cultural institutions and Dutch artists. Canivell represents 50% of the Román & Canivell studio and has been the Dean of the College of Architects of Seville for just over a year. A registered architect since 1994, she brings more than 30 years of professional experience, with significant projects such as the Abba Hotel in La Encarnación, the restoration of the Cádiz Station, the Galia Nervión building, and the Ballena Housing development.
Event in English with consecutive interpretation into Spanish
This event has taken place
Co-organized with the Embassy of the Netherlands in Spain
Simon Armitage, one of the most renowned and widely read poets in the United Kingdom, has always believed that poetry offers more possibilities than just a book. This openness to collaborating with other genres led to his involvement with the music band Lyr, which also includes producer and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Pearson and musician Richard Walters. Many of the band's song lyrics are written by Armitage. Their critically acclaimed albums, Call In The Crash Team and The Ultraviolet Age, have garnered over five million streams, and their UK tours have included major festivals such as Green Man and Blu Dot. At this event, attendees will be able to experience the sound of this “post-rock with jazz influences” band, interspersed with poetry readings by Armitage himself.
Simon Armitage, originally from Huddersfield (UK), was named Poet of the Millennium in 1999 and was elected to the Royal Society of Literature in 2004. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his services to poetry in 2010, and in 2012, he was presented with the Hay Medal for Poetry at the 25th Hay Festival. As part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad in Great Britain, while serving as a resident artist at London’s Southbank, Armitage conceived and organized Poetry Parnassus, a gathering of poets and poetry from all Olympic nations. This iconic event is widely regarded as the largest gathering of international poets in history. He is also a member of the Poetry Foundation.
The event will be presented by the British Ambassador to Spain, Sir Alex Ellis.
Event in English
This event has taken place
Co-organized with the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Spain and the City Council of Seville
