Hay Festival Cartagena 2026

Community work and the links built up among communities are spaces of resistance in a context of global capitalism, a way of making the world a more liveable place. This also applies to cultural spaces and the visual arts. Three leaders, from the United States, Colombia, and Brazil, tell us how they work, from the field of cultural management (Dejanira Álvarez and Catalina Villa) and from multimedia art (Frekwéncia).

Consecutive interpretation from Portuguese to Spanish available

Carry Somers (UK), a proponent of ethical fashion and founder of Fashion Revolution, has recently published The Nature of Fashion, a fascinating look at how we learned to create clothing from plants. This lecture will reveal some of the most recent research involved in writing the book, as well as some of the stories included in its pages, which take us from the first vegetable fibres to the colonial era and beyond. After the talk, there will be a question and answer session moderated by Ricardo Chica, Deacon of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Education at the University of Cartagena.

A conversation about the memory, identity and representation of a region absent from Colombia’s founding narratives: the Caribbean. In “Nosotros, 172 años después”, Ruby Rumié offered a digital intervention to the Comisión Corográfica (1850-1859), replacing the original figures with 100 inhabitants of the Caribbean of today, each of them crowned by their favourite food. The artist, together with the anthropologist Weildler Guerra and the chef Álex Quessep, explores how art and food reveal identities, question stigmas and create spaces for memory and collective pride. Images of the project accompany the dialogue, showing how photography, archive and words can link up to offer new views of the Caribbean.

All events on Sunday, February 1st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.