Greetings from Sandblast,

Hope you have had an enjoyable summer and feel recharged again to enjoy the active months ahead. We are now back in action and in this issue will highlight exciting news and developments since our Mid-summer Western Sahara Festival, in July, along with upcoming events which you shouldn’t miss.

Stave House in the Sahara back to the refugee camps
We are very excited that our colleague Violeta Ruano will be returning to the Saharawi refugee camps for 3 months in October for the second stage of the early music education project Stave House in the Sahara. There is still time to become a sponsor of one of the children for only £30. Interested?

Sandblast is delighted to be one of the main partners of this project. We are deeply grateful to Ruth Travers from Stave House for generously donating the programme to the camps and to The London College of Music which has supported the project in various ways.  These partnerships along with some amazing support we've received from individual donors has made it possible for things to happen and develop. We're also thrilled to announce that Oxfam Solidarité (Belgium) have recently given €2500 to refurbish a room to create a music-making space for children, in the camp of Boujdour,  in support of Stave House in the Sahara. Read more

Fundraising and Run the Sahara 
2016 has been spectacular fundraising year for Sandblast. In total, we have raised nearly £30,000 for our project work in the Saharawi refugee camps. This has been thanks to the amazing efforts of our 2016 Run the Sahara runners and also to the generosity of donors who have shown support for our projects  in the camps, which currently are:

Saharawi Artivism Fund (SAF), Studio-Live Local and Stave House in the Sahara.

We now have a nice group of runners coming together for the 2017 Run the Sahara race in the Algerian Sahara next February. We hope to recruit at least 5 more people to join before the registration deadline on December 15. Please help us spread the word!. And if you are a former particpant, we would love you to encourage others to join us in 2017.

​Donations and Van hunting
This year has also been a great year for music equipment donations made in support of Studio-Live Local. We got a mint-shaped 24-track Tascam mobile recording studio in July and in early September a lovely electric guitar from David in Yorkshire.
 
Our next big mission is to get all the donations of the past 18 months transported in a donated or second-hand van, down to the camps, by the end of this year. If anyone loves these kinds of ventures and would like to help us please get in touch. We really need it!

Olive Branch Arts Cabaret Extravaganza on Sept 18
Come along for this fun night of fund-raising for their work with youth, women and theatre in the Saharawi refugee camps. Click here to book tickets
 
Music of Exile film teaser
Have you heard of the upcoming film Music of Exile from the Saharawi of Western Sahara? Directed and recorded by Katch Holmes it will be featured at WOMEX '16 in Santiago de Compostela (Spain) next Oct 21. Click on the pic to watch a short teaser and get inspired by the revolutionary history of Saharawi music!

​This summer, in collaboration with Stave House music academy, we invite you to a heart-warming and eye-opening evening of film premiers, photography, talks, music & poetry for the Saharawis of Western Sahara. Come and join us in our mid-summer festival to learn more about the situation in Africa's Last Colony and the awareness-raising and educational projects we're currently developing in the Saharawi refugee camps.

Tickets are just a £5 suggested donation to help us cover the expenses of the event. ​

This year's Run the Sahara has been an incredible success! A group of 15 Sandblast runners from the UK and the US travelled with the Sandblast Team to the Saharawi refugee camps last February 20th to participate in the Sahara Marathon (Feb 23rd). Together, they had been fundraising as a team for over 6 months, raising the incredible amount of £14,063.37.

Visit our Run the Sahara 2016 Team Page to see for yourself!

This money will be used to reconstruct some cultural buildings destroyed during last year's floods, and to fund our exciting new project, the Saharawi Artivism Fund. Stay tuned for updates!

In July 2015, UK-based charity Sandblast Arts launched Run The Sahara 2016, taking place at the end of February, next year, in the Algerian Sahara. This international solidarity race, known as the SaharaMarathon, supports the indigenous Saharawis of Western Sahara, the majority of whom are refugees based in desert camps near Tindouf in SW Algeria. Funds raised for the charity go to its Studio-Live music project in the camps.

​Next year's race coincides with the 40th anniversary  of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR,) self-proclaimed on February 27 in 1976. Recognised by over 80 countries world-wide, the government in exile, based in the camps, represents the collective aspirations of the Saharawis for independence in Western Sahara. The territory was colonised by Spain for a century, but upon its withdrawal was then occupied and forcefully annexed by Morocco in 1975. This sparked a mass civilian exodus and a 16 year long war with the Polisario, the Saharawi liberation movement.