The summer edition of the 47th Assilah International Cultural Season opened in the Moroccan city of Assilah on Sunday, organised by the Assilah Forum Foundation under the patronage of His Majesty King Mohammed VI of Morocco.

The events of this edition will continue until 5 July, with activities dedicated to the visual arts running over the course of one week. These include a mural-painting workshop, a collective visual arts exhibition, an art symposium, and creative workshops.

Since its founding in 1978, the Assilah Forum Foundation has adopted the motto "Culture and Art in the Service of Development," becoming a leading platform for supporting artistic work and cultivating aesthetic appreciation among the public, particularly younger generations. The foundation organised its first mural-painting workshop in the spring of 1978.

In a bid by the foundation's general secretariat to preserve the mural-painting tradition established by the late Mohamed Ben Aissa and Mohamed Melehi, this special edition brings together 15 male and female artists from Morocco, Syria, Spain, and Belgium. Among them are artists who took part in the earliest years of this distinguished tradition, alongside new generations and a group of creative children and young people from the city of Assilah.

Participating in this year's workshop are 12 male and female artists from Morocco: Malika Agznay, Abdelhay El Mellakh, Abderrahman Rahhoul, Abdellah Al Hariri, Abdelkader Al Aaraj, Abdelkarim Al Wazzani, Aziz Al Sayed, Mohamed Al Mourabit, Bouzid Bouabid, Ilyas Al Salfati, Al Sadiq Al Hadri, and Mohamed Al Anzawi. Also participating are Marta de Pablos from Spain, Khaled Al Saai from Syria, and Charlie Kiss from Belgium.

On 3 July, an art symposium entitled "Assilah Murals: Towards a Visual Identity for the City" will be held at the Mohammed Al Breini Hall at the Hassan II Centre for International Meetings. The symposium will bring together a number of pioneers of the visual arts, critics, and media figures, and will be followed by the opening of a collective exhibition titled "Assilah in the Shade of Its Colours," featuring works by artists from the city of Assilah at the Mohammed Ben Aissa Fine Arts Gallery. The exhibition will run until 31 August.

The summer edition also features a literary expression and children's writing workshop at Dar Al Sabah for Solidarity, with 70 children taking part.