Festival of contemporary circus and artistic creation in unconventional spaces

LEME returns to Ílhavo between December 5th and 8th, 2024, through a partnership between Bússola and the Municipality of Ílhavo, through the 23 Milhas cultural project. In 2024, people and their relationship with artistic creation will be at the center of the manifesto of the sixth edition of LEME. The programme aims to pursue the principle of valuing the “common space”, as a place for meetings, highlighting people as an essential element of the experience of public space and their stories as a tool of memory and humanization of the common space.

Reinforcing the festival's international positioning as a platform for disseminating new trends for contemporary circus, in the next edition LEME hosts the final stage of two European cooperation projects, co-financed by the European Union. As part of BETA CIRCUS (European artist training project), the community living in the center of Ílhavo will be challenged to share memories with Melody Nolan [NL], Omer van Soldt [NL] and WETUMTUM [PT] with the aim of creating an original multidisciplinary participatory artistic project that, based on circus and music, opens new paths in participatory circus. On the other hand, the Hand to hand project (exploratory project for the European circus) will challenge the socio-economic context of Cais dos Bacalhoeiros for the development of artistic circus creations in unconventional spaces that reflect on the social ecology and sustainability of circus systems. After a long process of research and creation, eight European artists will present their creative prototypes in the program of the next edition of the festival.

CIRCUS FORUM will once again transform Ílhavo into a professional meeting point with a European dimension to debate the future challenges of the circus and its relationship with other sectors of activity and other creative areas.