The Kirikou Events Association presents its flagship event, the Festi’Couleurs 2020-2021, which gathers many visitors every year.
For 13 years now, Festi’Couleurs has been an artistic and festive event around gender diversity. This free event was born out of the desire to value cultural diversity and rich social diversity in Occitanian / Pyrenean / Mediterranean regions.
Coping with this health and economic crisis that has affected all continents, AKE wishes to renew the social, cultural and living-together bond by organising the 14th edition of Festi’Couleurs 2020-2021. “2021 Africa season in Crossed Cultures” will take place on Friday 28th and Saturday 29th May 2021 at the Exhibition Centre Hall 8.
This festival will showcase the art and cultures around the world. It is an opportunity to discover artists from all walks of life: musicians, singers, actors, authors, painters and dancers, and so on. This gathering makes it possible to enjoy a wide range of animations and to live a collective and festive day.
The programme will be rich and varied: concerts, dance, entertainment, games for youngsters and older ones, parades, humour, a charity raffle… The funds raised during this event will be donated to international solidarity actions. This event will also be an opportunity for AKE to renew its trust with its partners.
You will find below their press book explaining:
their events’ and festivals’ organised throughout the current year 2020 and the year 2021
all actions taken with the collected funds during these events and festivals.
I attended on 3rd January 2020 Stephan Eicher‘ s live concert atLa Halle aux grains in Toulouse (France). Although, I have listened to this singer and musician for many years now, it was the first time I went to his concert in this great theatre concert hall.
Stephan Eicher’s choice for concert place is spot on, a 2200-seater theater with a great acoustic sound and allowing an intimate connection with his public.
He obviously plays his old hit «Déjeuner quoi?» Stephan Eicher shouts and laughs during the concert. It’s the public who demands it. Stephan Eicher answers «Déjeuner en paix» doesn’t belong to me anymore. The music industry has got lots of money to pay for their lawyers, while I haven’t. So, I’m no longer allowed to sing it. However, you can sing it !» Approval screams. The band delivers a powerful Rock and the crowd sing it in chorus.
1. EXPLANATIONS for STEPHAN EICHER ‘S absence
We know the misfortunes of the Bernese (Swiss German) musician with his Universal Major label. Reason for which, he tells, his stage repertoire has been for 5 years stuck to the same hits with no new released records. How can it sounds positive to us instead of the bitter experience he had. Since digitalisation, he said he didn’t like the way his contract was changed…but he didn’t ask for more money or music rights. However, he was lucky enough that his existing repertoire allowed him to tour with new shows rearranging his songs and offering new tracks.
2. ABOUT STEPHAN EICHER
Since more than 30 years, Stephan Eicher experiments and challenges himself musically. First, synthetic music with Grauzone and its techno-pop, then at the beginning of the 80s he tries out the rock experience. Then he goes for ballad songs, uses more classic or traditional instruments he associates with modern sounds and rhythms to offer a varied and rich discography.
3. His new album
This time, Stephan Eicher also comes back with new «Homeless songs» album (Polydor) composed of original tracks and of course a new show. He surrounds himself with a quartet to tell his new story, centered on acoustic and classic instrumental music.
In his own terms, this tour brings «not just 5 years of imposed ice skating figures but also introduce us to free skating.» Homeless songs do not have any place in the current music industry. They live elsewhere and sleep outside. This is in no way offensive , even the opposite ! These songs are like small stones children pick up along the river. For an adult, impossible to understand what guided the child’s choice. Was it the pleasant refreshing feeling of the stone ? A small pattern on the surface ? A weird or funny shape ? The fate ? These songs hope to create a relaxing, comfortable space, a dreaming pause.
4. His musicians during this 2020 tour
For this concert, he is accompanied by 4 independent musicians :
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Reyn Ouwehand, pianist, film Composer and multi-instrumentalist from Netherlands, who is the opening act.
Heidi Happy, Swiss singer and multi instrumentalist (vocals, guitars, cello, mandolin, xylophone).
Baptiste Germser, French horn (cor en français) and bass player and music producer.
Ludovic Bruni, French guitarist, bassist and music producer.
3. Live recordings in audio tracks and videos
a) Reyn Ouwehand’s opening act
Reyn played several piano tracks for us and I recorded two of them. Although I do not know the song titles, feel free to add them in the comment section below this blog post!
Obviously, Reyn continued playing for Stephan Eicher throughout his concert!
b) Dominique Regeff
Then there was a special guest, Dominique Regeff, French improvisor, composer, and musician specialising in stringed instruments. He came to play the hurdy gurdy (vielle en français) on the ‘Rivière’ song from Stephan Eicher. In this audio recording, Stephan introduces him and how they collaborate together.
c) Stephan Eicher
Finally, amongst other songs, I recorded these songs in audio and video versions. Once again, if any of you know the track title for his Swiss German song, drop the info in the comment section! He sings in French, Swiss German as well as English.
Here, you will recognise his very first hit in France!
And other well known French tracks!
That is all from me! Enjoy the listening and subscribe!
Heather Burns is a British tech policy and regulation specialist in data protection at Webdevlaw. She educates the profession on the policy issues which impact our work, inspires professionals to participate constructively in the regulatory process, and facilitates cooperation between policymakers and tech. She also works for WordPress core privacy & cross-CMS privacy teams.
Prior to the GDPR law enforcement, she gave a speech at London WordPress Camp 2017 about ‘Protecting the web from political uncertainty’ that is still valid today. Let me transcribe the content of this talk.
TRANSCRIPT:
First of all, there is simply no president for the territory that we, as professionals working in the digital industry, find ourselves. There is also no burying our heads in the sand about this. Decisions are being made about the policies, the regulations, and the systems that you work in, that will impact the way you work.
Indeed, decisions are also being made about the tools that you make. Decisions can hurt the people that use the tools you make and deliberately allow those tools to hurt people.
Nonetheless, whatever your political stance, whatever your beliefs, whatever side you are on, the fact is this: the foundations of the open web are currently under threat.
UK: Brexit
Secondly, in the UK, Brexit and the withdrawal from the European Union as well as the European Data Protection regime will stay for a while. But what comes after that is unknown. And that could end the freedom of movement of data as we have known it. It will spell an end to the freedom of movement of tech talent, which has enabled you to get a job anywhere in Europe or for your European colleagues to come here as they wish. The withdrawal from the Digital Single Market System of the European Union will remove us from a Trading Market worth 450 Billion Pounds to the digital industry. And we are also now dealing with openly xenophobic and authoritarian currents leading to mass digital surveillance.
Moreover, the US is withdrawing from the net neutrality protections that have enabled the free flow of information and commerce. The US is also dealing with openly xenophobic and authoritarian currents, which have resulted amongst other things in mass personal profiling.
Although I can’t tell you what to believe, I can tell you what I believe.
Indisputably, I can tell you that as, designers and developers, you are people with extraordinary power and influence. You make the tools and see the data. You know better than anyone what needs to be done to protect the people that have entrusted you with their data.
Now, in this talk, I’m going to encourage you to:
Think proactively about self-defense and user protection
Adopt protective workflows and business practices
Prepare yourself to face the challenge ahead.
1. Think ABOUT USER DATA PROTECTIOn
Regardless of what political stance you hold or what you believe in, the fact of the matter is that people are now working in a climate of fear.
UK – Brexit:
We have the Digital Economy Bill which is enabling data sharing across government on a massive scale, ostensibly for things like fewer poverty or sanctions and punishments.
We have the Investigatory Powers Act, which is the master law that left no less than Edward snowed in, god-smacked. Amongst its provisions are mandatory backdoors in hardware, which makes the UK a ‘no-go place’ to do business with.
We are also seeing actual deportations from grandmothers who have lived in this country for 30 years.
US – ’45’:
Initially, the list-building has begun. People are being profiled.
As we saw in the CIA WikiLeaks dump, there are backdoors in hardware, a bit like in the UK.
Similarly, we are seeing the deliberate calculated removal of regulatory protection and horrific things at border controls, such as the searches you can expect.
We are seeing the deportations of children separated from their families at stalls, as a fulfillment of a campaign promise.
Care for the people in the data
To support responsibly your users and address their concerns, you must overcome your apathy. I know that in digital your default settings are ‘politics and laws, not interested in’. You have the luxury of thinking that because you are the 1% by being a digital nomad. You can move to Europe, or you can flee somewhere else. But guess what, the 99% of people who will never have the luxury to do that, will live with the consequences of the tools you create.
2. Adopt DATA PROTECTIOn WORKFLOWS
We are in hostile territory. What you must do, you must adopt legal and technical defense strategies. In Europe, we are at an advantage as we have an overarching data protection law. In the United States, there is no overarching data protection law, It is divided by sector or by State. You may have heard that California has a very strict data protection law which is now under attack. But, America as a whole doesn’t have a system like we do in Europe. That is very important to know as America is where a lot of data is held and processed.
For this, you can adopt as a defense strategy, it’s the GDPR.
GDPR is a General Data Protection Regulation that has become enforceable on 25th May 2018. We, in the UK, are going to get into this, regardless of Brexit, and are going to stay in this for at least a few years. What comes after that, as I said, is a problem that is concerning most of us deeply. But for now, we have a little bit to work with.
This regulation replaces the existing European data protection regime which is from, believe it or not, 1995. You know it here in the UK data law act of 1998. GDPR is a much-needed update for the digital age. The existing data protection law was from the age of dialogues and floppy discs.
GDPR has new requirements for many things. Things you need to know are:
Accountability: you have to become accountable for and document all your data protection compliance
Consent: you must secure and confirm consent from the people whose data you are using.
Third-party data sharing: there are really strict regulations on third-party data sharing, who you are passing your data to, whether that’s Facebook or a business partner
Data Breaches: these become a bit more enforceable than they have been in the past
Individual Rights: you must be prepared to meet people’s rights over their data
International Data Transfers System. This has been thrown into chaos because of Brexit and the Trump administration.
But for our purposes today, the key takeaway from GDPR:
PBD: Privacy by Design
DPBD: Data Protection by Design.
That’s not quite what it means now. It now means:
a) Privacy by Default
Going forward, in your work, whether it’s your website, your apps, what data you take, receive and how you use it, you must provide clear transparent standardised privacy notices. There are templates you can follow with icons and tables. The days of non-sense worthless 30-page pieces written by a lawyer are over.
The PBD calls for Data Minimisation: the fewer data you have, the fewer data you can slur. You need to start thinking of data as your liability. Reduce the amount of data you are collecting and restoring. There’s going to be mandatory deletion of the data. You are going to be prepared to document when and how you deleted this data. Did you delete it? Prove it!
Increased accountability: you can no longer retrofit the data protection project after a fault. You have to factor it in the minute you start creating a project.
Enhanced subject access requests: that is the rights people have over their data
Third-party data sharing
b) Data Protection by Default
Privacy impact assessment: you need to start conducting privacy impact assessments right now. What are you collecting? Where is it stored? What’s on your website’s database and what you are doing with it? Secure passwords?
Data retention and deletion
Technical and security accountability
Data Breach Preparedness: when a data breach happens, you now have 72 hours to report it to the Information Commissioner’s Office and there is certain information they will require
Staff awareness: data protection privacy now becomes everyone’s problem.
Under the current data protection regime, there are the:
c) Privacy Shield
It is a voluntary agreement used by US companies to ensure compliance with EU standards for EU data. In other words, if you are doing business with a company in America, they must agree to safeguard your data in their regulatory system as if it was still in Europe.
Privacy has always been fragile, and imperfect but provides legal certainty.
It may be invalidated soon and already is by Trump. Consequently, do not assume that your data is secure in the USA. You must ensure any US companies you do business with our Privacy Shield are Compliant with the EU data protection law. That goes with any third-party companies you do business with.
If you live in the US or in a country that doesn’t have a legal framework, you can still use GDPR. It’s a fantastic tool kit with a basic legal framework.
So, let’s go beyond that.
d) Technology in Hostile States: Ten Principles for User Protection
It may sound counter-intuitive to what I have just said but do not rely on the law to protect systems or users. Always take further steps.
Prepare policy commentary for a quick response to the crisis. It means that digital professionals must be prepared to counter-act really stupid political arguments with coherent facts, figures, and technical explanations, as soon as that crisis hits.
Only keep the user data that you currently need. It’s GDPR. We can see that these working principles tie into data protection law.
Give users full control over their data. Users have the right to ask the company about the data they hold about them and to ask them to delete it.
Allow pseudonymity and anonymity: Pseudonymity is data that has been separated from any personally identifiable information. Anonymity allows people to register anonymously. Do not put a Facebook social log-in on your site because everything those users are telling you is going to Facebook.
Encrypt data transit and at rest.
Invest in cryptographic R&D to replace non-cryptographic systems. It doesn’t really concern you if you are a small company.
Eliminate single points of security failure, even against coercion: Multiple layers of security like sandboxes, modularisation, voluntary surface reductions, and risk privilege. What you are doing on the backend does really matter.
Favour open source and enable user freedom: Advocate freedom to use, to share, to improve the software.
Practice transparency: share best practices, stand for ethics, and report abuse.
e) So, what can WordPress developers do on a practical level?
Conduct Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs): go to the Commissioner’s Information Office.
Provide privacy gradients: It’s not on or off. Give people multiple choices about how much data they share with you.
Check your external connection requests: we played around yesterday with the plugin called ‘Snitch’. That will tell you what all your plugins are doing.
Don’t send/include personally identifiable data ‘home’: if you are using your plugin to phone home to check the version, that’s great. But if you see that such as and such user at this URL has an insecure blog, you are in trouble.
Don’t send personally identifiable data to third parties.
Enable data minimisation and deletion.
f) Yet, what can WordPress meetups do?
Run a WordPress (WP) security clinic on Plug-in security, data audits, HTTPS everything.
Host a crypto party: where you bring your gadgets and learn as well as educate users on how to make them secure.
3. Prepare FOR DATA PROTECTION CHALLENGES
Now, I’m going to prepare you to face challenges by avoiding these pitfalls:
a) Avoid Digital solutionism
Aka ‘we can solve this with an app’ to deal with the political disruptions.
Digital solutionism is the ego-mania of the 1% that looks good for you but doesn’t actually solve the problem.
The offline problems you are dealing with now do not have online solutions.
Online tools are the means, not the end: Here are some examples of tools that aren’t digital solutionism.
Techresistance.org: These are originally American grassroots projects by digital professionals building tools that can be used for the next couple of years
Tech-forward.com.pk: These are originally grassroots’ projects by digital professionals building tools that can be used to go through the next couple of years
Datarefuge.org: is where people are downloading and safeguarding data that the Trump administration is deleting such as the EPS data and Global Warming.
Progcode.org: it’s a progressive coders’ alliance coming up with digital tools.
Theyworkforyou.com / Mysociety.org: these come from UK and use a lot of Government open data but we really have nothing comparable to the level of digital activism that is happening in the US right now.
b) Cliktivism
Signing a petition.
Saying ‘hey I signed this petition’ on social media.
Signing a petition isn’t political activism. I can tell you that 95% of signed-up petitions are list-building exercises for fundraising/collecting money.
Using an automated ‘email your MP’ message. That is the equivalent of spam.
Political activism isn’t memes, hashtags, and tweetstorms.
Political activism is not speaking to your filter bubble.
On the contrary, what we need now is:
c) Meaningful engagement
Engage personally with your managers and leaders about these issues.
Engage personally with policymakers such as MPs, and parliaments….
Join open rights groups.
Give numbers, figures, and the bottom line. They are interested in your uninformed opinion. Be factual.
Be constructive and cooperative.
Speak through industry bodies.
Here is a slide I really like. This can apply to any sort of advocacy.
Beyond this, this graph will provide you with more details. Let me explain it:*
You’ve got the rubbish things at the bottom that you don’t do, which are really ineffective, i.e guilt, punishment (breaking the law, getting a fine). It doesn’t work.
As far as requirements are concerned, GDPR is coming and you need to comply. But I’m not trying to use it as a stick to hurt you with.
In regards to rewards, this isn’t a game. Don’t incentivise it!
Instead, enlighten and inspire your colleagues, and your industry about these issues and about the way forward.
Even so, all these suggestions I gave you today assume that you have time for movement and work within your organization. Other than that, what happens if you don’t?
d) When the day comes
Then, what happens when you find out when the day comes that someone is expecting you to use the tools you created to hurt people?
And what about when you find out that the tools you have made are already being used to hurt people?
Besides, what if you become aware that the data you have control over has been compromised or misused?
Consequently, you must remember you have the responsibility to care for the people in your data and may be called upon to do something. You need to search yourself and may be prepared to refuse a Government request and to leak responsibly data. The most professional and ethical thing you can do in your career is dropping a table. You may be called on to delete data and even may be called on to sabotage it.
e) You think that’s radical. It’s not. It’s called ‘ethical hacking’
Thus, let me introduce you to my new hero. So, is anyone here from France? Do you know who this is?
Does anyone know what that is in the background? It’s a punch card. This was a fellow called René Carmille.
He was a punch card computer expert and a controller general of the French army in the 1940s, who ran the demographics department of Vichy and later France’s national statistics service. Additionally, he looked after the technology behind the French census, which ran on punch cards.
Clearly, punch cards are wonderful in the innocuous form of technology.
However, the Nazis came along. The punch cards running IBM technology became the means by which the whole holocaust was carried out.
So, what did René do? He sabotaged the census. Together with his team, they purposely delayed the census by mishandling punch cards and leaving stored layers of them in the backroom for 2 years. He also hacked his own machines. Column 11 in the punch card displayed the person’s religious status, so the Nazis could find out who and where all the Jews were. Also, he hacked the machines so that they couldn’t punch anything into column 11. Likewise, this worked for a few years and they got him.
But what did it accomplish? This resulted in the deportation and execution of 73% of all Jews in the Netherlands because of his data sabotage and ethical hacking.
4. Conclusion
Finally, billionaires at tech companies do not change the world. The world changes through quiet dignified acts of civil disobedience. God forbid, when the day comes, when you have to make that choice, what legacy will your code leave to the world?
This was a rather unplanned night out I went for on Wednesday 25th May 2016. Had dinner across the street and was attracted to this Favela Chic bar and restaurant. So, I came in and must say this was a great idea!
This ‘Favela Chic’ club isn’t only playing – as the name suggests – Brazilian sounds, but a great variety of world music.
FAVELA CHIC IN PICTURES
Here are few pictures of the venue, which I thought is quite rather original:
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DJ ARTHUR CHAP
The main focus for this night was on DJ Arthur Chap. He played a nice mix of world music and more mainstream music such as Afrobeats, Afrodisco, Soul, Groove, Funk, …
If you want to know more about him, check this link:
First of all, I managed to catch two performances of Traditional West African music bands at Festival Rare Talents.
Secondly, it was the festival’s closing performances on Saturday 28th May 2016 in Montreuil (Paris). I’m glad I didn’t miss them! I truly enjoyed the performances!
Traditional West African BANDs
The support band was Ibrahim Keita and Nankama from Burkina Faso.
The main band was Sékouba Bambino from Guinea. The latter band is composed of:
Sékouba as lead singer,
a choir from Mali
and musicians from Sénégal.
To know more about these respective bands, check their Facebook pages:
I had booked my tickets for the Sankofa Soul TV Contest in advance. I had initially found the event advertised on Facebook.
TICKET OPTIONS
There were offering two options:
dinner + live performances (25 Euros)
live performances alone (pre-sale for 10 Euros and at the door for 12 Euros).
I took the first option and didn’t regret it. The ‘Petite Halle’ concert room was full and I would have otherwise kept standing for 4 hours!
SANKOFA SOUL TV CONTEST FINALS
For those who would like to watch the soul singers’ final (10 singers selected from the two previous semi-finals), it will take place on Saturday 18th June at 8.30pm in the ‘New Morning’ concert place, 7 rue des petites écuries, 75010 Paris, France.
There is no dinner option for the final but there are seats, so come early and pre-buy your ticket if you want to sit! Tickets on pre-sale are for 14 Euro.
candidates singing at the contest’s semi-finals 2
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SANKOFA SOUL TV CONTEST RECORDINGS
Curious to hear how they sound? Here are few samples recorded of their performances (not necessarily the winners). Which one(s) do you like most? Comment!
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
Now, want to know who were the semi-final’s winners?
They are Antonia, Sarah, Romina, Natan and Mel.
For more information about them, check the ‘Les Candidats’ tab from the official website: http://sankofasoulcontest.com/
While I was spending a holiday trip in Paris (France) in April 2016, I thought I might go to an expatriate networking party. I wanted to meet international people living in the city and have some fun with them!
I had found a black and white expatriate networking party in Paris advertised on the meetup.com website (Expats Paris) taking place at ‘rue du Colisée’ close to Champs-Elysées and Franklin D. Roosevelt metro station. I was curious to see what it’d be like.
There were around 60 people from different nationalities attending the event, meeting either to build communities or to improve their language skills.
I was greeted by meetup members and organisers. Then I was introduced to Michael, who I had asked few questions online before coming to the event. He was friendly and introduced me to few guests.
expatriate networking
Then, we spent a bit of time chatting around on the ground floor before hitting the dancefloor. Music was an eclectic mix of Latin, Arabic, pop and hip-hop music.
I hope you will enjoy the below video and mixed tapes!
Do you also have other videos you want to share? Please don’t hesitate to do so in the comment section!
Irie Révoltés is a band from Heidelberg, Germany. „Irie“ comes from the Jamaican creole patois and can be translated as “positive, happy or free”. “Révoltés” stands for “Rebels/Insurgents”. The band tackles critical social themes through their German and French lyrics. They have mixed musical influences such as Reggae, Dancehall, Ska, Punk and Hip Hop.
For more information on the band, check out the following links:
If you are looking for a place to practice for free your dance or circus skills, or simply want to come and watch an affordable show, whether experimental theater, music or else, “Le 104”, 5 rue Curial, 75019 Paris (19th district, close to Riquet metro station) is the right spot to come to!
This creative space is open to everyone and promotes collaboration, exchange and innovative ideas of all kinds. The building consists of a big public hall, research workshops and performance areas.
Want to know more about it ? Check out the pictures taken on Saturday 9th March 2013 (slideshow) as well as their website below:
emelinejonetcom.wordpress.com 