ARCS Workcamps are a travel experience designed for those who wish to engage directly with cooperation and solidarity projects, within pathways of responsible tourism. These are not simple visits, but opportunities for exchange and active participation: participants can get to know local communities up close, share everyday life moments, and contribute concretely to ongoing social initiatives.

Through Workcamps, travel becomes a tool for mutual learning. Participants enter into dialogue with different contexts, develop a deeper awareness of social and cultural dynamics, and enrich their personal and human experience through direct fieldwork.

After a four-year break, ARCS’ photography workshop in Cuba returns, developed in collaboration with professional photographer Giulio Di Meo. The experience is designed to use photography as a tool for knowledge and relationship-building, going beyond the tourist gaze to engage with the island’s social, cultural, and human complexity.

The workshop is intended for those who wish to approach documentary photography in a real-life context, through a path of observation, listening, and storytelling. The approach is not limited to visual documentation, but is a field-based exploration that places people, stories, and territorial transformations at its centre.

In previous editions, activities took place in different areas of the country, including Havana, Pinar del Río, Holguín, Baracoa, and the Escambray region, following traces of Che Guevara’s legacy. This year, the journey will once again focus on the capital, but will also extend to Matanzas and the Ciénaga de Zapata, two deeply different contexts.

These are symbolic places, shaped by stories, contradictions, and processes of change. From the urban areas of the capital to the more intimate setting of Matanzas, and to the rural and coastal zones of the Ciénaga de Zapata, the journey will allow participants to closely observe the diversity of Cuban realities, far from the main tourist circuits.

Cuba has been under embargo for over sixty years and is currently going through one of the most complex economic and social phases in its recent history. Within this difficult reality, however, strong dynamics of everyday resilience, solidarity, and adaptability continue to emerge, shaping the life of local communities.

The workshop aims to reflect this complexity through a process of social and documentary photography developed directly in the field. Encounters, exchanges, and moments of dialogue with local residents and organizations will become an integral part of the experience, turning the journey into an opportunity for authentic connection and critical understanding of the context.

The project is promoted by ARCS APS and is part of the broader Workcamps framework, which for years has been promoting experiences of cooperation, volunteering, and responsible tourism.

The programme may be subject to changes depending on the evolving local context, with the aim of always ensuring the quality and safety of the experience and respect for host communities.