A two-day creative lab, organized by DOEN, AFAC, Festival du Niger Foundation, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (The Netherlands), was held in Amsterdam on 24 and 25 October 2016 and gathered leaders and practitioners in the culture field to discuss the role of arts and culture in building understanding and cohesion, and how the arts and culture community can build towards collaborative action for positive impact. Culture Resource’s Managing Director, Rana Yazaji, attended the lab alongside directors and representatives of various organizations, including, RIWAQ (Palestine), Medrar for Contemporary Art (Egypt), Bayimba Cultural Foundation (Uganda), European Cultural Foundation (The Netherlands), Festival au Desert (Mali), Goethe-Institut Beirut (Lebanon), and Arterial Network (Seychelles).
The lab focused on the urgent need to find new and more collaborative models for work, with an emphasis on gathering those who can navigate through chaos and take action wisely. As a space for dial gouge and an opportunity to exchange on both an intercultural and interregional level, the lab also explored ways in which the work of artists and changemakers working for social change could be leveraged.
