Culture and Arts Programme (CAP)

The Culture and Arts Programme (CAP) continued to offer production grants, scholarships, seasonal grants and a residency programme. It also organized various interventions and projects, published several books recommended for publication through the Young Writers Award in 2017, organized the Young Writers Award in 2019, and facilitated a number of capacity building interventions particularly in the field of playwriting, in addition to Ramallah Doc, Les Ateliers Deplaces and more. Regarding projects and programme co-funded and managed by the CAP; the Culture, Art, and Social Engagement Programme (CASE) was extended for an additional year with the support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), and two news grants were offered. The programme also continued implementing the Visual Arts: A Flourishing Field (VAFF) project funded by Sweden. During this reporting period, A second cycle of grants was announced, in which 28 proposals were received and a jury was formed to review, evaluate and develop the proposals. Eight new grants were approved. Work also continued on the Selat: Links through the Arts project, in order to complete the implementation of grant-winning projects from 2018, some of which have been extended into the current year.

CAP offered 16 new scholarships to students of music and other performing arts fields. These included 11 scholarships in music, 5 in theatre and dancing, and others in the field of cultural management to help students pursue their education at various colleges and universities around the world. This year saw 4 students earn their BA and MA degrees with the support received from the CAP. Many of the graduates were consequently employed and/or undertook new art projects.

Through the Arts and Literature Unit, CAP supported 10 new art projects in the fields of performance, visual arts and audiovisuals selected from among dozens of other projects by a professional jury according to specific criteria, within the framework of AMQF’s Performing Arts Grant and the Selat: Links through the Arts project. The CAP continued to follow up on 3 projects in progress from previous cycles, and provided the support needed to complete others.  These projects allowed an opportunity to 97 artists to take on new artistic and cultural projects and 36 young artists to participate in training and capacity building programmes supported by the CAP. These programmes enabled artists to improve their skills and expertise, consequently creating a career path that will secure a livelihood of future professional engagement in the art field.

At the end of last year, CAP announced an open call for the Young Writers Award 2019 in the fields of poetry, novel, and short story. It also announced two artist residencies until mid-year and nominated three artists to participate. During the first half of the year, CAP organized a second part of the playwriting workshop attended by 6 writers, and co-organised and hosted a three-day symposium entitled Out of Sight as part of Ramallah Doc, which was attended by producers and directors of 23 documentaries who presented their projects to a number of specialists.  

Through the Arts and Literature Unit, the programme maintained its support for several important art festivals through funding 13 local and international festivals in various creative fields including dance, music, theatre, cinema and folklore. Similarly, it supported 25 different activities and artistic projects in literature, visual arts and performing arts. The 446 performances and events that were part of the festivals and different events took place in various Palestinian cities and towns, and attracted 114,782 visitors from different social and age groups. The events reached people in Haifa, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ayda refugee camp, Nablus, Gaza, Birzeit, Taybet al-Muthalath, Deir al-Ghushoon in Tulkarem, Abu Nawwar community in Jerusalem, az-Zawayda in Gaza and Sa’ir and Yatta in Hebron. Outside of Palestine, events took place in Syria, Lebanon, Algeria, Jordan, Tunisia, Egypt, France, Germany, South Korea, Canada, Switzerland, Spain, Chile, England, Japan, Norway, Austria, Belgium, Iran, Turkey, Morocco, the Netherland, Iceland, Italy, the United States and China.

The programme also funded the participation of 7 individuals and Palestinian groups in international cultural and artistic events. With the aim of publishing and promoting new works and experiments, 3 books including a poetry volume and two novels were published out of 9 books recommended for publication by the committee. Additionally, 4 book launch events attended by 290 people were held in Ramallah and the Visual Arts: A Flourishing Field project attracted approximately 59,779 people who interacted with the events organized by VAFF’s partner art institutions. Whereas the 35 performance and art events organized as part of the Culture, Arts and Social Engagement (CASE) project were attended by 6,500 people.

The reporting period saw the implementation of most of the eight grant agreements funded by the “Visual Arts: A Flourishing Field” project in its first cycle. The implementation of collective and individual development interventions has also been completed. Thus, the project has contributed to developing sustainability opportunities for 8 institutions working in the visual arts sector in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Partner institutions were thus able to implement 274 art programmes including artist residencies, exhibitions, training workshops and dialogues benefitting approximately 1800 trainees, hundreds of which are artists and art students, and attended by nearly 40,000 people. These institutions also allowed various opportunities for artists including 137 production grants, and supported the production and presentation of 249 new artworks. Similarly, the number of resources acquired by partner institutions from equipment, devices, books, spaces to art collections doubled from 4000 before the beginning of the project, to 8,378 by the end of the first cycle. The jury of the VAFF’s second cycle nominated 12 institutions for the grant, requesting them to develop their respective proposals. VAFF signed 8 new Grant Implementation Agreements in 2019, amounting 1,140,464 USD.