A programme of Music and Arts exploring the inspirational transformation of Colombia’s ravaged capital in the 1990s.

Film: Bogotá Change (Andreas Møl Dalsgaard - Upfront Films) 2009
Lisboa International Independent Film Festival 2010 Audience Prize, CineEco 2011 Environmental Anthropology Award.

7pm -8pm Clowns instead of traffic police. A vaccine against crime. Weapons melted down to baby cutlery. BOGOTÁ CHANGE is the story of two charismatic mayors, Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa who, with unorthodox methods, in less than 10 years turned one of the world's most dangerous, violent and corrupt capitals into a peaceful model city populated by caring citizens. With Mockus and Peñalosa and key members of their staff as first-hand witnesses, the film uncovers the ideas, philosophies, and strategies that underlie the changes in Bogotá and which are now being exported to cities worldwide.

8pm - 12am The free film showing wasfollowed by a DJ session by Truth & Lies Music DJ's Joff and Ex-Friendly, spinning a selection of music from Colombia and the region; from Cumbia to Afro-Colombian and Global Bass flavors.

When people in English speaking countries think of Colombia, the image in the mind is more often than not of drugs and violence. More specifically the seemingly endless conflict between the narco-traffickers (Pablo Escobar and his murderous ilk), the Marxist terror/freedom fighters group the FARC and the corrupt Colombian government themselves (along with their ‘allies’, the even more murderous right-wing paramilitary groups). But this shortchanges this massively diverse country. The size of Spain and France combined, the country contains some of the most beautiful landscapes on the planet with its attendant biodiversity and despite the harsh realities of the many poor, some of the greatest music and cultural exports imaginable. There is so much more than blood and cocaine.

The nation’s capital Bogotá was regarded as the most desperate and ruined city on Earth in the early 1990s until an eccentric bicycle-riding, public-mooning professor stepped out from the academic ranks and transformed the city and her people.