Fish Island Arts Centre brings real grassroots community development through great cuisine, arts, & culture. Welcome to The Fish Island Community Arts Centre facebook home. The Fish Island Community Arts Centre (FICAC) is an exciting new initiative created by Kek Soon and Julien Poulson, first established as the Kampot Arts & Music Association (KAMA) in 2015. FICAC is located just 12 mins from dow
ntown Kampot and is a striking and highly visible performing arts venue created to shine a light on Cambodia’s vibrant and emerging contemporary arts scene. FICAC is a place to host and facilitate cross-cultural arts projects and exchanges and a meeting point for Cambodian and international artists to work together. FICAC brings together a number of community leaders, designers and artists, watch this space as we profile FICAC project partners. FICAC is conceived as a grassroots culture venue starting life with the opening of a permanent theatre space and arts center where local and international arts projects can be launched and staged. The venue offers international artists residencies through organizations including Res Artis, Asialink and Network Asia, as well as working directly with artists and producers to design residencies and projects based on their individual needs. FICAC aims to assist in the further understanding and development of emerging art trends in Cambodia and our ASEAN region. It endeavors to promote cross-cultural exchanges by lifting barriers and provides a creative environment for the needed time, space and facilities for production, residencies on-site, servicing artists in their research, and engaging local artists, craftspeople in collaboration and employment. Principal Objectives:
The Fish Island was established by KAMA (Kampot Arts & Music Association) to create a viable working environment in music, dance, theatre, and visual arts to work within the rural farmlands of Cambodian to create viable, meaningful community arts with the view to create hope, sustainability, employment, and enrichment in a poor fishing and farming community in Kampot, Cambodia. Our focus is on four kinds of contemporary arts:
1. Working space and equipment for ceramists, sculptors, and mixed media artists.
2. Arts management, research and implementation expertise for locally developed arts projects with national and international show outcomes.
3. Production of site-specific performing art including music, dance, and theatre.
4. Creative arts space for experimentation and development of multi-media art
Environment and Space
The Fish Island Bamboo Theatre is situated in the middle of rice fields in the center of Trey Koh (Fish Island) and faces back across the fields of this large island towards the mainland and the spectacular views of Bokor Mountain. It is 10-minutes by car or moto to the center of Kampot town. The FIBT is situated in the middle of rice fields on a 17x56metre parcel of land. The reclaimed rice paddy allows for theatre space, five artists-in-residency bungalows a recording studio, a small ceramics & sculpture studio; a library, an outdoor stage, kitchen and eating space and lush tropical gardens. The Fish Island Bamboo Theatre is an arts initiative conceived by Julien Poulson who is best known as the founder of psychedelic rock band The Cambodian Space Project and as director of The Kampot Readers & Writers Festival. Poulson sees the FICAC as a utilitarian workspace and performing arts venue that will benefit artists who find inspiration plus great social benefits of living and working within a rural farming and fishing community and thereby not only find the personal development experience rewarding but can be proud of their contribution to bringing the vibrancy of arts & culture, life and colour, to a impoverished community where there is little or no access to positive and engaging community arts. In turn, our community venue is designed as a social enterprise to develop arts events that engage the local community by bringing employment, empowerment through arts and the opportunity to work with visiting artists and professional producers. FICAC @ Copyright 2020
FICAC does not allow Facebook to share any images, texts, video, and sound recordings belonging to FICAC and staff, to be posted on their website. Photos, current or past, posts, phone numbers, or emails. Absolutely nothing can be used in any form without written permission or verbal consent.
