Friday, June 6, 2014

Solidays 2014 press conference (Wednesday)

This is a bit overdue. I hadn't been in a writing mood this week, so please excuse the delay.

On Wednesday morning, instead of heading to the office as usual all of us interns headed to a press conference for Solidays. This an annual festival put on by Solidarité Sida, an organization that aims to raise funds for AIDS treatment and research, expand people's understanding about the disease, and challenge the stigma and oppression that many activists and infected people face. The festival serves all of these purposes at once by bringing in artists from all of the world to perform and attract people to the cause. It draws more than 150,000 spectators over a 3-day period every year. Solidays 2014 (June 28-30) honors the memory and example of Nelson Mandela while carrying the slogan, "The fight must go on."  This is all just basic information that I gathered from online and what was said at the press conference. For more details, check out the Solidays website.

We stood along a wall watching the press conference, which lasted about an hour and a half. Afterward everything moved outside to the garden where the organizers of the event posed for pictures with one of this year's big names, French band Shaka Ponk. Following that there were more interviews and photos in various spots in the venue, along with mingling over finger food and alcohol. Three artists from La Métisse will be performing at Solidays, so my fellow interns and I were there to get our association's name out there and hand out copies of La Métisse's 2013-14 compilation CD. But we didn't end up handing out too many and mostly just walked around checking out what was going on and tasting the finger food. I tried almost everything even though I had no idea what I was eating, and most of it didn't disappoint. All in all it was a great experience for me (first press conference ever, woo!), and a great excuse to spend the first half of the day out of the office for all of us.


 Bread and Butter [Paris] photos - JUNE

 Bread and Butter [Paris] photos - MAY

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