A Celebration of Creativity in Riba-roja d’Ebre!

After a year of preparation, exchanges, and artistic exploration, the Riu d’Art Street Fest took place on 13th December, bringing together local, national, and international artists in a vibrant celebration of culture and creativity.

Throughout the year, the event has been shaped by artist residencies, which allowed participants to learn about the area, engage with local communities, and exchange ideas across borders. From heritage visits to social and cultural meetings, every moment built toward this culminating celebration of artistic collaboration.

This September, Riba Rocks welcomed six creatives from the Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton) for a three-week Creative Residency in art, design, and Catalan culture. The group — including two fashion designers, three fine artists, and a fashion management student — explored new ideas and practices, the documentation of which will feature in the Riu d’art Street Fest 2025 Open Studios with Roser Gay.

This Spring, Riba Rocks hosted Fine Artists and Photographers from Nottingham Trent University (NTU) for a vibrant creative residency in Riba-roja d’Ebre, supported by the Turing Scheme UK. Their stay brought fresh artistic energy to the village, inspiring new projects and leading up to the Riu d’art Street Fest 2025.

At the end of the month of August, we had the pleasure of organising a puplic presentation of the new creation for the Riu d’Art Open Air Gallery.

The large scale mural is created collaboratively by Courtney Madley, Grace Atkins, Junnan Zhu, Katarina Kemp and Tezni Williams, students from University of Southampton and Winchester School of Art.

Designed specifically for this site, the mural presents a visual composition encompassing the 32 day residency the students completed this summer with the support of Turing Scheme UK funding.

The month of May 2023 saw the creation of the new mural for the Riu d’art Open Air Gallery. This stunning artwork has been created by Dana Leslie, Mhaira Brown, Kyle Leeson, Jasmin Robertson and Josephone O’Connor. The artists produced this work as part of their Grampus Turing Placement here in Riba-roja d’Ebre. The mural is entitled ‘Fluir amb l’aigua segura’ which translates as ‘Go with safe water’, taking inspiration from a found letter.

This year’s Riu d’art Street Fest saw the creation of two large scale site-specific murals. The first in Santo Domingo and the second in Carrer Triangle. We also added to this years event an exhibition of artwork in the Town Hall. Five artists from the Ribera region showed their work under the title ‘Confluence’. We also added a digital dimension to this years event. Four digital artworks in response to the theme ‘Water/River’ were projected onto the beautiful stone wall of the Castle in Plaça del Forn.

We get ready to welcome artists to Riba-roja d’Ebre to create new works for the Riu d’art Open Air Gallery. This edition will include large scale murals and projected video works, as well as an exhibition of local artists and a free art workshop!

The month of May saw the creation of a new artwork for the Riu d’art Open Air Gallery. This work is situated in the Barrio of Santo Domingo. It’s history formed the inspiration for the work, with people coming to Riba-roja d’Ebre in the 60s to construct the large hydroelectric dam and simultaneously building their houses in this location.