Reclaiming Our Commons: A Proposal for Cultural Collaboration Across the Arab Region

Culture Resource is launching the open call “Reclaiming Our Commons: A Proposal for Cultural Collaboration Across the Arab Region,” which was formulated in partnership with A.M Qattan Foundation and has been developed by a number of fellow and partner organizations, including Ettijahat – Independent Culture, Aflamuna, and L’art Rue, which constitute a nucleus contributing to project funding and programming.

“Reclaiming Our Commons” is a call to contribute to building a participatory creative process addressed to initiatives, cooperatives, independent cultural and artistic organizations, as well as artists and cultural actors. It seeks to support artistic and cultural projects across diverse artistic and interdisciplinary domains, provided they adopt cooperative, participatory, and/or commons-based approaches, whether at the project development level, project ownership, project interpretations and outputs, or project revenues.

Culture Resource and the project partners will provide grants ranging from €8,000 to €30,000 to fund approximately 12 projects (the funding will be determined based on each project’s needs). The projects will be implemented and showcased in various cities across the Arab region in 2024 and 2025. Subsequently, specific projects will be selected to participate in central events in Beirut and Ramallah, the details of which will be determined later.

The project encourages the use of documentation as a main practice throughout the implementation of the projects. This is to ensure engagement with a broader audience and contribution to collective learning by adopting various mediums such as texts, videos, podcasts, radio, comics, or any other mediums. The project also necessitates adherence to cultural and artistic work ethics and the adoption of a fair economic model that ensures the rights of authors and workers.

Eligibility Criteria

• Individuals:

Artists from diverse artistic disciplines and independent cultural actors, provided they are from the Arab region (regardless of ethnicity and citizenship status), whether they are living inside or outside the Arab region.

• Groups:

Independent non-governmental initiatives, cooperatives, and artistic and cultural organizations in the Arab region or abroad, whose work serves artistic and cultural production in Arabic.

Timeline

• Open call: 6 March, 2024
• Online sessions to introduce the concept of the Commons and its application within the context of the open call:
  First Session: Tuesday, 19 March 2024, 15:00 – 17:00 Beirut time
  Second Session: Wednesday, 27 March 2024, 15:00 – 17:00 Beirut time
  Third Session: Thursday, 28 March 2024, 15:00 – 17:00 Beirut time</span >
• In-person meeting with potential applicants in Ramallah, Palestine: 23 March, 2024
• Deadline for applications: 12 April, 2024 at 16:00 Beirut time
• Results announcement: Mid-June, 2024
• Projects implementation: From July 2024 to July 2025