El street art de Cartagena is a vibrant and colorful expression of local culture. Street artists use a variety of techniques and styles to create their works, such as graffiti, music, traditional ancestral dances, rap, the performances and crafts, among many others. All this, added to the beautiful infrastructure of the city as a background, increases the emblematic and unique character for which it is recognized in the world.
This symbiosis between colonial heritage and modern expressions was what motivated Annunziata Mazzilli to travel to Cartagena and choose the school Nueva Lengua to learn Spanish. Nunzia —as we affectionately call her— is an Italian teacher who came to Colombia because she knew it as a creative and artistic land. "I think it is the Latin American country with the most cultural identity [...], this was the real motivation for coming."

Nunzia began her Spanish classes in Nueva Lengua at a basic level, but after just a few weeks he already felt confident and knowledgeable to hold a conversation with local people. This happened one day when she visited the Plaza de la Trinidad, where she met a group of young people who work dancing hip hop through the streets of the city. After a long and interesting conversation in Spanish about her art, she proposed that they hold a cultural event together with different groups.

“I knew that it would be a challenge for me to organize, speak, write permission letters to be able to hold the event in a public space and that all tourists and Cartagena residents could appreciate the city's street art. I started looking for other people who wanted to participate in the non-profit event”.

Finally, and thanks to her effort and dedication in organization and management, Annunziata was able to carry out the project: Rebelión Festival vol. 1, edition hip hop, «from the street to the world». The event took place in the artistic neighborhood of Getsemaní, and was attended by a guest DJ and the presentation of six different groups. With these non-profit cultural exhibitions, Annunziata wanted the community of the Getsemaní neighborhood and the tourists who frequent it to feel immersed in the celebration of cultural diversity.

But, without a doubt, the highlight of the festival was the work of Nunzia. “For me the final test was presenting the event, maintaining the speech and interacting with the attendees. I had mixed feelings about everything I had achieved in the activity and personally I had managed to speak a completely new language with excellent teachers who always supported me. At the end of the event many people came up to me to congratulate me for such a beautiful activity and for my Spanish”.
As she herself acknowledges, being immersed in a culture when learning a language is as important as having good guides during the process, as it helps to develop more advanced language skills, to understand the form of communication that is closely related to the mentality and the native values.

“I am completely proud of everything I was able to achieve with the help of all my teachers at school Nueva Lengua”. Nunzia was in charge of coordinating the details of the shows with the artists, and she relied on the school for the management part of the event. With the help of teachers Gerald and Ana María, Nunzia was able to design the flyers for the event, as well as the writing of the letters and other documents that she had to submit to obtain the permits for the organization of the festival. Likewise, during her conversation classes, she practiced closing and opening speeches, and even perfected her humor in Spanish through jokes that he wanted to include in his words.

All the articles in this blog have been written by the teachers of our school and by students from different countries who traveled to Colombia to learn Spanish.
“You travel too and study Spanish in NUEVA LENGUA"

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