FLAGSHIP PROGRAMMES
National Network
Italy
Address
Via San Giovanni Li Cuti,56/cCountry
City
CataniaProvince
CataniaMobile Phone
+393492596844Telephone
+393492596844E-Mail (2)
federico.guarnaccia96@gmail.comE-Mail (3)
federico.guarnaccia96@gmail.comE-Mail (4)
federico.guarnaccia96@gmail.comWebsite
Click HereYear of Establishment
2022Contact Person1
Federico GuarnacciaJob Title 1
Sustainability ManagerContact Person 2
Gaetano LibrantiOrganisation Type
Non-Governmental OrganizationFields of Activity
Arts, Democracy and community development, Environment/Sustainable development, HeritageGeneral Information
Salmastra is a cultural association based in the harbour of San Giovanni Li Cuti in Catania, Sicily, founded in October 2022. We work at the intersection of art, ecology and community life, taking the sea and its shores as both our physical and conceptual ground. Our space sits directly on a small fishing harbour, next to the fishermen association Pesca a Mare Catania, and this proximity shapes everything we do: who we talk to, what questions we ask, what kind of events we organise.
We are nine people, and around us floats a wider constellation of artists, researchers, activists and neighbours. Since our founding, we have built a practice rooted in slowness and situated knowledge, working to reconnect Catania with a coast too many have stopped noticing. In a region where coastal access has been eroded by privatisation, we believe public space by the sea is worth fighting for.
Mission and Objectives
Salmastra works to rebuild the relationship between the city of Catania and its sea, using art, ecology and community practice as tools. We believe the coast is a public good, and that the communities living beside it have the right to know it, care for it and shape how it is used.
Our work moves along three lines. We support situated knowledge: the kind that lives in a fishing community, in a neighbourhood kid who grows up by the water, in an artist who spends time listening before making anything. We promote environmental awareness, connecting scientific information with everyday life through public assemblies, workshops and shared experiences on the water. And we create space for encounter between people who rarely meet: fishermen and artists, researchers and teenagers, locals and visitors from across the Mediterranean.
We operate with a transfeminist, ecologist and meridionalist approach, believing that how you work is as important as what you produce. Our programmes include international artist residencies, a multidisciplinary festival, ecotourism activities with the local fishing association, community assemblies and free public events open to everyone.
Main Projects / Activities
Since 2022, Salmastra has developed a consistent body of work rooted in the harbour of San Giovanni Li Cuti. Our activities span several formats, each responding to a different need within the community.
Maremeo is our international artist residency programme, now in its third edition and supported by Culture Moves Europe. Each edition hosts artists from across the Mediterranean and beyond, who develop their research in close contact with the local environment and community, leading workshops and producing new work.
Mycto.forme is our annual multidisciplinary festival, combining scientific talks, film screenings, live music, art exhibitions and independent publishing around the theme of marine ecosystems and alternative narratives about the sea.
CutiCunta is a regular public assembly format, each edition focused on a pressing social or environmental issue connected to our territory: water scarcity, coastal access, civic rights.
Alongside these recurring programmes, we organise ecotourism days with the fishermen association Pesca a Mare Catania, recycling and upcycling workshops, open-air film screenings, photography workshops, theatre and performance events, and large free picnics open to the whole neighbourhood. We hosted a sailing circus that transformed the harbour into a stage for five consecutive shows, and organised a diving contest for the kids of the village. In 2025 we co-organised a three-day event with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition before the Madleen sailed towards Gaza.
How can you contribute to the Network in your country?
Salmastra sits on the Mediterranean, literally. Our harbour in Catania is a point of arrival and departure for people, ideas and projects that cross the sea in both directions. Through Maremeo, our artist residency programme, we have already built working relationships with organisations and practitioners from across Europe and the southern Mediterranean, creating a tested infrastructure for cross-cultural exchange that is grounded in place rather than abstract.
Within the Italian network, we can contribute a perspective that is often missing: that of a small, young, community-rooted organisation working in the South, in direct contact with communities that are rarely included in cultural and civic dialogue. Our public assembly format CutiCunta offers a replicable model for bringing scientific knowledge and civic participation together at a neighbourhood level, particularly with young people who tend to stay outside these conversations.
We are interested in connecting with other ALF members to share methodologies, co-produce activities and strengthen a Mediterranean civil society that treats the sea not as a border, but as common ground.
Why do you want to join the ALF Network?
The Mediterranean we work with every day is not a border. It is a shared space, a common history, a set of problems and possibilities that belong to everyone who lives beside it. And yet the geopolitical realities of our region make it easy to forget this, turning what should be a site of encounter into a line of separation.
Joining the ALF Network is, for us, a way to act on something we already believe: that the communities on the southern and eastern shores of this sea have more in common with us than the distances suggest. We want to build relationships with organisations that share our focus on the sea, on ecology, on civic participation and on culture as a tool for connection.
The ALF open calls and programmes represent a concrete opportunity to turn these intentions into actual projects: co-produced residencies, shared festivals, exchanges of knowledge and practice between organisations that rarely get the chance to work together. We are looking for a network that can help us move from local rootedness to Mediterranean solidarity, and ALF is exactly that kind of structure.
Additional Information
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