In the summer of 2003, the Egyptian cultural manager and activist Basma El Husseiny met with a small group of Arab cultural activists and artists to discuss the idea of establishing an Arab non-profit cultural organization. There followed several constituent meetings attended by Adila Laïdi, Roger Assaf, Heba Saleh, Eva Dadrian, Ezzedine Gannoun, Gamal Nkrumah, Aliaa El Gready, Hanane Hajj Ali, Jack Breskian, Khaled Jubran, Samy Hossam and Tarek Abou Al Fettouh. In the course of their discussions they identified three main areas of activity for the new organization: supporting the works of young and emergent artists, stimulating dialogue between Arab intellectuals and artists and their peers in countries of the South, and showcasing non-mainstream artistic experiences to wider audiences in the Arab region. Culture Resource was officially founded at the end of 2003 and registered in Belgium as a non-profit organization operating throughout the Arab region, with its administrative base in Egypt.
Culture Resource officially kicked off in April 2004 with the Awwal Rabie (The First Spring) cultural festival in Cairo which soon evolved into the biannual Spring Festival taking place concurrently in Cairo and Beirut. Culture Resource’s first program to support young artists and writers from the Arab region was the Production Awards program which offered small grants to artists under the age of 35. There followed, in the same year, the Youth Platforms program which consisted of three creative workshops: Remix for music, Safha Jadida (A New Page) for literature and Start of the Game for theater. At the outset of 2005, Culture Resource launched its third program, Mawa3eed, to support artists’ mobility and promote cultural and artistic exchange between Arab artists in the region. This was also a way to link the three programs since artists could take part in one of the three creativity platforms in order to develop their work, then apply for a Production Award and, afterwards, benefit from the travel support offered by Mawa3eed.
Also in 2005, Culture Resource, in collaboration with the Aga Khan Foundation, inaugurated El Genaina Theater in Al-Azhar Park in Cairo. In the years that followed, this venue showcased a vast and diverse array of Arab and international performers for large and youthful audiences. That same year, the Cultural Management Training program was launched in collaboration with the European Cultural Foundation. Its first tasks were to train trainers from the Arab region in cultural management and to draft training syllabi and course materials in Arabic. Over the coming years, Culture Resource organized numerous training workshops for a large number of emergent cultural managers from different Arab countries and it translated, published and distributed books on cultural management in order to build an Arabic-language resource library for young professionals. In 2012, this program expanded to include the Imkan program, which organizes a series of regional forums for young cultural leaders.
Culture Resource then began to study the idea of founding an independent Arab fund for culture. This research was instrumental to the establishment and launch of the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) which Culture Resource co-founded in 2006 and co-directed until 2009.
In 2009, the groundbreaking Cultural Policy Research program to monitor and develop cultural policy in the Arab region took off with the first-ever survey of existing cultural policies in nine Arab countries and the publication of the findings in book form. This program eventually expanded to include national cultural policy working groups in ten Arab countries, along with numerous publications and research in the field, as well as the founding of the Arab Cultural Policy website to promote the exchange of expertise and lessons in the development of social policies.
In 2010, a pilot program for music education was designed and launched in the Al–Darb Al-Ahmar district near the El Genaina Theater. Housed in the Al-Darb Al-Ahmar Arts School (DAAS), the program offers instruction to school-age children in percussion and brass instruments and circus arts.
Culture Resource continued to expand its activities after the grassroots uprisings in early 2011 which brought regime change in some Arab countries and political, economic and social upheaval in others. Inspired by the growing sense that arts and culture could play a pivotal role in building civil society and that space was opening up for new possibilities in the independent cultural scene, Culture Resource designed and launched one of its most ambitious programs “Abbara” which aims to help young Arab cultural organizations attain higher degrees of stability and sustainability. The program began in 2012 for organizations from Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Syria, and Libya and subsequently it became open to organizations from all Arab countries.
Culture Resource also incubated the Action for Hope cultural relief initiative, which was launched as a pilot program in 2013. Established as a separate organization since 2015, Action for Hope aims to advance arts and culture as an essential/vital means of support for individuals and communities, especially those in political, economic or social crisis.
In 2013-14, Culture Resource conducted a feasibility study to determine the Arab country best suited to host the first master’s program in Cultural Policy and Cultural Management in the Arab region. The study also explored potential partner universities, course structure and content. As soon as the research was completed, the process of program design and preparation was set into motion in partnership with Hassan II University in Morocco and Hildesheim University in Germany. The first class of ten students began studies in October 2018.
As the environment for cultural work deteriorated with the return of a politically repressive climate in Egypt, especially after the promulgation of the new NGO law, it was decided to relocate the administrative base for Culture Resource’s regional programs to Lebanon. As a result, the Egypt programs (El Genaina Theater and Al-Darb Al-Ahmar Arts School became independent and established themselves as Egyptian limited liability companies by the end of 2016. Since June 2017, Culture Resource’s base of operations has been in Beirut.
The organization has continued to adapt and respond to the changing circumstances and needs within the region, always working to improve the programs and services it provides to artists and organizations in the Arab region. In view of the political realities and threats facing Arab artists, Culture Resource launched Kon Ma’ Al-Fann (Be with Art) in 2017 in order to support artists at risk. The program offers short term financial support to artists in the event they are forced to leave their homeland. Other existing programs have continued to evolve and grow. For example, the mobility grants program was expanded to include travel for Arab artists to platforms and events outside the Arab region, enabling them to reach new audiences and opening opportunities for them to present their works in the global cultural scene.
In addition to running its own programs, Culture Resource has collaborated with international partners to launch and implement joint initiatives. Prime among them is Tunisia Balad El Fann, a pioneering joint project with the Tunisian Ministry of Culture that aims to enable cultural actors to achieve their projects by providing them with a series of capacity-building workshops and that also offers financial support to cultural projects in all Tunisian governorates. Others are Tandem Shaml, an interregional cultural exchange program between Arab and European cultural actors that is carried out in collaboration with the European Cultural Foundation and MitOst (Germany); and the Redzone Festival, an event organized in partnership with the Norwegian partner KKV (Kirkelig Kulturverksted) with the aim of highlighting issues related to freedom of expression in the arts.
The outcome of the years of activity since 2004 is that numerous artists, cultural managers, and emergent organizations in the Arab region have received either financial support or training; a diverse audience, numbering in the thousands, has experienced concerts, exhibitions and seminars; a history of successful collaborations and partnerships with other regional and international organizations has been established; and a vast network has been facilitated to connect artists in the region. However, the most important outcome is the possibilities that have been provided by Culture Resource to artists and cultural actors and to the societies to which they belong. These possibilities cannot be quantified, and their effects will only become apparent through thousands of stories still to be told.