Between 18 and 21 January 2016, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, was the meeting place for researchers and artists, art students and teachers, policy makers and cultural producers, museum experts and exhibition makers to think about new paths in arts education. The symposium Mediating Past, Present and Future: Dialogues with Global South Experiences, an academically driven transdisciplinary gathering collectively organized by art schools of the global south, was organized as a workshop. The presentations alternated with focus group sessions, and the whole program was interspersed with visits to artist’s studios, cultural places in town and an evening of video art. This formula for discussion turned this academic event into an encounter, or to put it in the words of André Lye Yoka, des retrouvailles: "an event of reunions".