Once again Breaking Walls’ Summit is approaching, and I can’t help but feel anxious about it. It’s that feeling of knowing something important is getting closer, and you want to get there even though it’s scary. And I am looking forward to meeting with my international family again, this time in a country with whom I share my ethnicity and mostly my culture. This will be a new experience for me, one I have never faced before. A feeling of going to a new home, with the memories of the old one, but the sensations of a new one.
This year once again I’m hoping to, apart from meeting different people and cultures, get to know Palermo from its inner roots, and get to participate actively in any way I can to help in their country. One of the days I usually enjoy the most in Breaking Walls is what we call the Community Service Day. A day when we can give our “grain of sand” to be part of any community project in the city, from helping in an association focused on the growth of children, to helping and meeting a group of women surviving in places where it isn’t easy for them – to any places where our help may be needed. Because that’s it: having the opportunity to be of help, to open our arms to whoever may need them, and have the opportunity to be there for the people of Palermo. It’s one of the most beautiful things someone can do for this world, and, it’s an opportunity not often found in our daily life.
And then, how not to forget what Breaking Walls is. I encountered someone I knew before joining this fantastic movement a few days ago, and the one thing that I really took away from that meeting was how much I’ve changed and evolved as a person since I first joined in 2019.
Every year, being able to open my mind to every activity we do throughout the Summit and being able to use my writing, which I’ve been doing since I was a child, to convey what I typically keep buried in my thoughts allows me to see the world in a whole new light.
I’ve grown because I’ve had the opportunity to meet myself in a really special way. And every year is a new challenge. I challenged myself with dance last year, and I’d like to do so again this year.
I want to go to Palermo with a whole new wild idea because art is everywhere, and where else can I take this challenge and triumph than with Breaking Walls?
Spero di conoscerti, Palermo.
Fran – Barcelona artist