© Reem Rizk
Preserving the disappearing, rethinking the known, creating space: AFAC’s 2025 Training and Regional Events propose what a collective can be
28 / 11 / 2025

In the face of war, cultural erasure and marginalization, ecological collapse, and unrelenting trauma, what can the act of coming together do in the here and now? The 20 projects selected in AFAC’s 2025 Training and Regional Events program have novel answers to this persistent question.

For some, the answer lies in the ability to re-stitch together a disappeared or disappearing past: a public square in Khartoum reimagined online, the sound ecology of Syria figured in a digital archive, the espinyat music of Mauritania formalized.

For others, coming together allows for the possibility of collective knowledge production in the face of colonial violence. What would it mean to revisit the texts of Fanon today, to think again what empathy can be, understanding how our water is weaponized for extractive economies? Can we tell our own stories through radical publishing in Iraq away from dominant colonial narratives? What would it mean to make a movie at the intersection of filmmaking and ecological practice?

And yet others aim to create space in places where it might not have been thought possible: a tent in Gaza fashioned as a refuge for children to reconnect with their imaginations, film screenings in Upper Egypt or the mining region of Tunisia, a place to heal.

These many themes range in form from public programs, training workshops, lectures, digital documentation platforms, archiving and memory preservation initiatives to festivals and events. They look to bring together the children of Gaza, the peripheral communities of Syria, the youth of Iraq and cultural producers and artists of Libya.

The 372 applications submitted for consideration in this year’s program were reviewed by readers committees made up of: director, curator and writer Dayna Ash (Lebanon); cultural project director Ghita Khaldi (Morocco); writer and journalist Rana Yazaji (Syria); executive and creative director Chaymaa Ramzi (Egypt); curator and journalist Omnia Shawkat (Sudan) and executive director of FilmLab Palestine Ola Salama (Palestine).

Shortlisted applications were then evaluated by a jury composed of Jordanian academic Samar Dudin, Tunisian author Fatma Cherif and Egyptian executive and creative director Chaymaa Ramzi. Following their deliberations and the final selection, the jurors issued the statement below:

    “Serving as jury members for the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) is both a pleasure and an act of responsibility. Each application stands as a testament to the courage and creative persistence of artists and cultural workers across the region — people who continue to imagine, document and create amid violence, displacement and erasure.

    The difficulty in choosing among such profoundly engaged projects reflects not only artistic excellence but also a shared commitment to truth, care and community.

    The AFAC Training and Regional Events Program 2025 received 372 applications, from which 20 projects were selected. The projects come from 11 countries and showcase a remarkable diversity of disciplines, ideas and approaches.

    What stood out this year were projects that moved beyond form to deepen our collective knowledge — initiatives that confronted coloniality, memory and trauma, that addressed the urgencies of environmental collapse and displacement and that built community-rooted spaces of collaboration.

    We were particularly moved by many projects that addressed serious socio-political challenges. Several proposals integrated strong research and archival dimensions, aiming to document endangered spaces, preserve cultural memory or highlight overlooked social histories.

    While the overall standard was remarkably high, we wished to see more regional collaborations — projects that fostered cooperation across Arab countries. Likewise, in the training and capacity-building category, there remains room for methodological innovation that reflects the complexity of today’s knowledge systems and learning environments.

    The selected projects demonstrate a growing desire — and urgent need — to rethink artistic and cultural practices in light of current realities. They demonstrate a strong link between research, reflection and accumulated knowledge, situated within a historical and political context marked by the genocide in Gaza, which has profoundly shaken established paradigms. This upheaval has inspired a renewed determination to question our frameworks and methodologies, giving rise to proposals deeply embedded in a decolonial perspective.”

the selected projects