Artistic Board & General Assembly

Mourad Sakli
Chairman
Tunisia

An oud player and composer, Sakli obtained a Ph.D. in musicology from Sorbonne University in 1995 and a certificate in cultural economy from Paris Dauphine University in 2013. He has served as director of Ennejma Ezzahra palace, which houses the Centre for Arab and Mediterranean Music, the director of the International Festival of Carthage and as Tunisian minister of culture. He has contributed to many workshops and training courses in cultural management. He is the founder and CEO of Altissimo Consulting which specialises in cultural engineering.

Habiba Laloui
Vice President
Algeria

Habiba Laloui, who obtained her PhD and a diploma in discourse analysis, currently works as a professor at the University of Algiers 2. She worked for ten years as a researcher at the Scientific and Technical Research Center on Arabic Language Development (CRSTDLA) in Algiers in which she was affiliated with the Semiotics Translation Laboratory and responsible for the Lisaniyat (Linguistics) journal. She is also a cultural journalist whose articles have appeared in numerous Algerian and Arab periodicals and who continues to contribute critical and creative writings to such publications.
In 2009, Laloui founded the Dialogue for Algerian Culture, a network for young independent cultural activists. In 2011, she was elected representative for North Africa to the U40 Africa platform for young cultural activists under 40. That same year, together with a group of cultural activists, she founded the Algerian Cultural Policy Group which seeks to develop new cultural policies for Algeria and which is currently working to augment the role of civil society in cultural affairs in Algeria.
Her first poetry anthology, Bitter Coffee, Sips After Midnight Sadness, was published in 2011 and her first short story anthology, Three Woman and a Quarter of a Man: Travel Stories, appeared in 2017.

Therese Ghobriel
Secretary
Egypt

Therese has over 15 years experience in the field of management of non-profit cultural organizations. Her professional interests range from financial resource management and capacity building to developing the organizational structures and ensuring the sustainability of cultural organizations.

Therese began work as a cultural advisor  in 2012, since which time she became involved in developing and restructuring the financial systems of many cultural organizations in the Arab region. Towards this end, she provided training courses to the staff members concerned with the financial management of these organizations and she also offered technical support at individual levels.

She earned a Masters in the management of cultural organizations from HEC Montreal and a BA in architecture from Alexandria University.

Fatin Farhat
Treasurer
Palestine

Fatin Farhat is a PhD researcher in cultural policy (University of Hildesheim), and facilitator of the Task Force for Cultural Policy- Palestine. Farhat has a long and intensive experience in cultural development and the management of cultural and artistic programs and has previously served as the director of the cultural and social affairs department at the Ramallah municipality and as the director of Khalil Al Sakakini Cultural Center. She has actively contributed to the development and establishment of numerous cultural initiatives and centres in Palestine and in the South Med region. She is a strong lobbyist for the decentralization of art and cultural practices and for the promotion of cultural development as an integral part of the local government’ mandate in Palestine. She has been involved in a series of cultural research, mapping and evaluation projects and interventions with many regional and international organizations. She is a member of the Expert Facility for the implementation of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions.

Hanane Hajj Ali
Lebanon

Hanane Hajj Ali is an artist, activist, researcher, consultant, and trainer. She is a member of the Expert Facility of the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.
Beside her renowned activity as an actress, writer and director since 1978, Hanane is a teacher in the Theatrical studies/Master program at IESAV- Saint Joseph universities. As a founder and board member of several cultural institutions and artistic organizations in the Arab world such as Culture Resource, Action For Hope and Ettijahat, she has been participating in the design, elaboration, implementing and monitoring of several regional and national events and programs focused on cultural management, cultural leadership and cultural policies. She is a member of the Arab Cultural Policy Group. She edited and wrote books and guides in cultural and artistic research, cultural management, and cultural policies.

Abderrahmane Lahy
Mauritania

Abderrahmane Lahy is a cultural director, documentary and feature filmmaker, editor and actor who has been awarded several diplomas in film directing and participated in numerous training courses in filmmaking, film and theatrical montage, and cultural management. Among the many films he has directed are: The Challenge (2012), Monza the Street Boss (2011), Our National Assembly (2009). He has also directed 23 theater plays and written four.

In addition to serving as a jury member at the Kelibia Film Festival (Tunisia), the Oran Film Festival (Algeria) and the Filmer à Tout Prix Festival (Belgium), Lahy is the founding director of la Maison des Cinéastes (Mauritania). He is the former chairman of Culture Resource’s Artistic Board, a member of the Arab Group of Cultural Policies, a representative of Arterial Network, North Africa, and a member of the Association of Moroccan Filmmakers.

Lahy has served as artistic and media advisor for World Vision, the German International Cooperation Association and the Mauritanian Central Bank. In 2017, he founded the Medrar Center for Culture and Education and the House of Mauritania Cultural Center.

Marwa Helmy
Egypt

Marwa Helmy is a cultural manager, a researcher in cultural policies and a UNESCO expert on the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. Marwa has practiced the work in the field of cultural management for more than 13 years. She has occupied several positions in different cultural organizations in Egypt and the Arab region: As programs manager at the British Council, Egypt, and supervisor of the program “Towards a Creative Economy Framework in Egypt”, as a deputy director and regional programs manager in Culture Resource and as programs coordinator at Cairo Jesuit Cultural Center. She was also a member in the Egyptian National Group for Cultural Policy from 2011 to 2014.

Following the Egyptian Revolution in 2011, Marwa became involved in several civil society cultural initiatives. She was a founding member of the Al-Fann Midan (Art is a Square) initiative which was dedicated to the principle of utilizing public spaces in Egypt for artistic and cultural purposes. She was also a member of the Coalition for Independent Culture in Egypt.

Marwa is a PhD candidate in cultural policies. After studying French literature at the Faculty of Letters in Ain Shams University, she earned an MA in cultural management and media from Senghor University, Alexandria. She also holds a diploma in journalism and media from the French Press Institute (IFP) and the Training and Development Center for Journalists (CFPJ), Panthéon-Assas University, Paris.

Abderrahmane Lahy
Mauritania

Abderrahmane Lahy is a cultural director, documentary and feature filmmaker, editor and actor who has been awarded several diplomas in film directing and participated in numerous training courses in filmmaking, film and theatrical montage, and cultural management. Among the many films he has directed are: The Challenge (2012), Monza the Street Boss (2011), Our National Assembly (2009). He has also directed 23 theater plays and written four.

In addition to serving as a jury member at the Kelibia Film Festival (Tunisia), the Oran Film Festival (Algeria) and the Filmer à Tout Prix Festival (Belgium), Lahy is the founding director of la Maison des Cinéastes (Mauritania). He is the former chairman of Culture Resource’s Artistic Board, a member of the Arab Group of Cultural Policies, a representative of Arterial Network, North Africa, and a member of the Association of Moroccan Filmmakers.

Lahy has served as artistic and media advisor for World Vision, the German International Cooperation Association and the Mauritanian Central Bank. In 2017, he founded the Medrar Center for Culture and Education and the House of Mauritania Cultural Center.

Ahdaf Soueif
Egypt

Ahmad Mulla
Saudi Arabia

Ahmed Ezzat
Egypt

A business and social entrepreneur. His professional career spans over 30 years in commercial and investment banking in the Middle East and Europe. Since August 2011, Ahmed has been contributing to social, cultural and relief organizations in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Europe. In 2016, Ahmed launched Ibtidi, an Arabic digital platform dedicated to disseminating podcasts through the production of audio programs, training and consultancy.

Aliaa El Gready
Egypt

Aliaa El Gready is an Egyptian visual artist whose work varies from installation to video installation to painting and jewellery. Aliaa’s work tries to open a space for re-thinking the inputs and the postulates which create the form of the contemporary relations between human beings.

Since 1998, Aliaa has also been working on the use of art as an introduction to promote social transformation. In 2013, she co-founded Gudran Association for Art and Development with the artist Sameh Elhalawany. In this framework, Aliaa mainly works on empowering women from marginalized communities by promoting the development of their skills and activating their creative community participation. Aliaa had several exhibitions and performances in Egypt, Cameroon, Senegal, Spain, Italy and Germany.

Awadh al-Hamzani
Saudi Arabia

Photographer and film director. He has worked as a professor of photojournalism at al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh. Many of the films that he shot and directed have been awarded prizes in international film festivals. He is the founder and general manager of Qomra, a Riyadh-based company that has provided services related to photography and filmmaking since 2012, and Makana, a space and coffeehouse dedicated to activities related to culture and the arts. He also created the website Vanoos, “the source of daily inspiration on the internet.”

Basma El Husseiny
Egypt

Basma El Husseiny is a cultural manager and an activist who has been involved in supporting independent cultural projects and organizations in the Arab region for the past 30 years. El Husseiny was previously the Media, Arts & Culture Program Officer for the Ford Foundation in the Middle East and North Africa, and the Arts Manager of the British Council in Egypt. In 2009, she co-authored the EU report: Towards a Strategy for Culture in the Mediterranean Region. She is also a UNESCO expert in cultural governance and a member of the Arab Cultural Policy Group.
In 2004, El Husseiny founded Culture Resource (Al Mawred Al Thaqafy) and was its director until September 2014. In 2006 she co-founded the Arab Fund for Arts & Culture (AFAC), and remained a founding trustee until 2009.
In early 2015, Basma El Husseiny founded Action for Hope, a newly established organization that seeks to provide cultural relief and cultural development programs.

Boumediene Belkebir
Algeria

University professor, researcher and novelist, he obtained his Ph.D. in 2013. He has authored many non-fiction works, most notably: Managing Change and Outstanding Performance in Arab Organizations, The Age of the Knowledge Economy, Organizational Culture in Business Organizations, Contemporary Issues in the Question of Progress in Arab Society, The Arab Spring Postponed, The Road to Innovation and Entrepreneurship and The Arabs and Questions of Development. He has also published two novels: The Myth of the Strong Man (2016) and The Muleteer’s Wife (2018). In addition to participating in many academic conferences in Algeria and abroad, he has served as a jury member for many cultural programs and projects, as an expert consultant for many scholastic periodicals and as a committee member for organizing academic conferences. He contributes articles on cultural affairs to newspapers and his photojournalistic travel writings on Arab and foreign cities have appeared in the Kuwaiti al-Arabi magazine and other Arab periodicals.

Brahim El Mazned
Morocco

Brahim El Mazned is the artistic director of the Timitar Festival of Amazigh and world culture, which hosts more than 600 artists and receives about half a million spectators each year. He is also artistic advisor and juror for several events, prizes and festivals in Morocco and abroad. He joined the EU / UNESCO Expertise Facility 2019-2022, which aims to support initiatives to implement and promote the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.

El Mazned is also a member or representative for various networks and meetings all over the world (FWMF, Hiba Foundation, AFRIMA, GloMMnet…). In recent years, he has hosted worldwide conferences and training workshops relating to careers in entertainment, he has initiated over twenty artistic residencies in Europe, in Africa and South America. He also participated in the creation of a dozen albums and hundreds of concerts at prestigious festivals and venues around the world. In November 2014, he successfully initiated the first Africa and the Middle East Music Meeting: Visa For Music.

Daniel Soil
Belgium

Daniel Soil was born in Brussels. After graduating from university, he taught civics for 15 years. He then headed youth associations. In 1998, he worked as an official in Brussels on cultural relations between Quebec, Africa, Central Europe and Southern Europe.
He worked as a cultural diplomat in Morocco between 2004 and 2008, then in Tunisia between 2008 and 2015, and was responsible for representing the French Community of Belgium in the fields of culture, education and the relations between civil societies. After retiring in 2015, he resumed his cooperative work and pursued his novel writing career. Having become a scrivener, he hosted every week people who were mostly foreigners, having difficulty writing personal, literary or administrative texts and documents. He also hosted conversations with recent migrants in order to facilitate their integration in Brussels life.
Since 2020, he’s been working as an animator, specializing in writing and photography at “Maison Commune”, a cultural space located in the heart of Brussels.

Dirk De Wit
Belgium

Fatin Farhat
Palestine

Fatin Farhat is a PhD researcher in cultural policy (University of Hildesheim), and facilitator of the Task Force for Cultural Policy- Palestine. Farhat has a long and intensive experience in cultural development and the management of cultural and artistic programs and has previously served as the director of the cultural and social affairs department at the Ramallah municipality and as the director of Khalil Al Sakakini Cultural Center. She has actively contributed to the development and establishment of numerous cultural initiatives and centres in Palestine and in the South Med region. She is a strong lobbyist for the decentralization of art and cultural practices and for the promotion of cultural development as an integral part of the local government’ mandate in Palestine. She has been involved in a series of cultural research, mapping and evaluation projects and interventions with many regional and international organizations. She is a member of the Expert Facility for the implementation of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions.

Habiba Laloui
Algeria

Habiba Laloui, who obtained her PhD and a diploma in discourse analysis, currently works as a professor at the University of Algiers 2. She worked for ten years as a researcher at the Scientific and Technical Research Center on Arabic Language Development (CRSTDLA) in Algiers in which she was affiliated with the Semiotics Translation Laboratory and responsible for the Lisaniyat (Linguistics) journal. She is also a cultural journalist whose articles have appeared in numerous Algerian and Arab periodicals and who continues to contribute critical and creative writings to such publications.
In 2009, Laloui founded the Dialogue for Algerian Culture, a network for young independent cultural activists. In 2011, she was elected representative for North Africa to the U40 Africa platform for young cultural activists under 40. That same year, together with a group of cultural activists, she founded the Algerian Cultural Policy Group which seeks to develop new cultural policies for Algeria and which is currently working to augment the role of civil society in cultural affairs in Algeria.
Her first poetry anthology, Bitter Coffee, Sips After Midnight Sadness, was published in 2011 and her first short story anthology, Three Woman and a Quarter of a Man: Travel Stories, appeared in 2017.

Habib Belhedi
Tunisia

In addition to serving as production and distribution manager for the National Theater of Tunisia, Habib Belhedi founded the Familia Productions company together with Fadhel Jaibi and Jalila Baccar. He has produced a number of works, such as Familia, Les Amoureux du Café Désert and Soirée Particulière.
Belhedi has also produced numerous television dramas, such as works by Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud, Anouar Brahem, Hala Alabdalla, Hatem Ben Miled, Bahram Aloui, Kaouther Ben Hania, Fadhel Jaibi and Jilani Elsaadi. In 2007, he partnered with a group of Tunisian filmmakers to form Arts Distributions, a company dedicated to bringing audiences back to the movie theaters. In this framework, they launched the CinemAfricArt movie theater which organized numerous cinema events and screened new films at the same time they opened in the US and Europe until it closed in 2011.
In 2013, Belhedi converted Le Rio movie theater in Tunis into a multidisciplinary cultural space. He produced El Mansia (2014), El Zaglama (2015) and El Maghroum Yjaded (2017) by Lassaad Ben Abdallah, and Hafedh Al Nidham (2019) by Rabeb Srairi.

Hammour Ziada
Sudan

A journalist and novelist, he has performed volunteer work for charities and civil society organizations. He has worked for many Sudanese newspapers, including al-Mustaqilla, Ajras al-Hurriya and al-Jarida, and he was the culture editor for the Sudanese al-Akhbar newspaper. His published works of fiction include A Life Story from Omdurman (short stories, 2008), Al-Kunj (novel, 2010) and Sleeping at the Foot of the Mountain (short stories, 2014). He is best known for the novel, The Longing of the Dervish (2014), which won the Naguib Mahfouz Prize in 2014 and was shortlisted for the “Arabic Booker Prize” in 2015. Several of his works have been translated into English. He was awarded Banipal Visiting Writer Fellowship of 2019, a residency that is hosted by St. Aidan’s College of the University of Durham, UK.

Hanane Hajj Ali
Lebanon

Hanane Hajj Ali is an artist, activist, researcher, consultant, and trainer. She is a member of the Expert Facility of the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.
Beside her renowned activity as an actress, writer and director since 1978, Hanane is a teacher in the Theatrical studies/Master program at IESAV- Saint Joseph universities. As a founder and board member of several cultural institutions and artistic organizations in the Arab world such as Culture Resource, Action For Hope and Ettijahat, she has been participating in the design, elaboration, implementing and monitoring of several regional and national events and programs focused on cultural management, cultural leadership and cultural policies. She is a member of the Arab Cultural Policy Group. She edited and wrote books and guides in cultural and artistic research, cultural management, and cultural policies.

Heba Saleh
Egypt

Hooda Shawa Qaddumi
Kuwait/Palestine

Hooda Shawa is a Kuwaiti/Palestinian writer living in Kuwait. Recipient of the Sheikh Zayed book Award for children’s Literature in 2008, her books include: The Birds’ Journey to Mount Qaf, The Animals’ vs the Humans at the Court of the King of the Jinn, The Yellow Man, The Secret Revealer, The Elephant’s Journey (Awarded Kuwait’s Children’s  literature award 2017), and  Apollo on Gaza Beach.

Hooda is the founder and Managing Director of TAQA PRODUCTIONS produces cultural projects in Kuwait and the Arab region. Productions  include: the  Arabic operetta Akhnaton (2012), the short documentary film My Pink Room ( shortlisted Abu Dhabi  Film Festival 2013), The Monodrama  Freya (2016),The Gift, a puppet shadow theatre performance (2017). The Dragon of Bethlehem (2017) and Ikara (2017).

Jan Goossens
Belgium

Jan Goossens is currently co-artistic director of Dream City and l’Art Rue in Tunis, and mandate holder for Brussels 2030 – Cultural Capital of Europe. He was artistic director of KVS, the Royal Flemish Theater in Brussels from 2001 to 2016, and general director of the Festival de Marseille from 2016 to 2022. Out of KVS and with a wide range of local and regional partners, he also co-organized six editions of ‘Connexion Kin’, an arts festival in Kinshasa, Congo.
With Dream City and Selma and Sofiane Ouissi, Jan Goossens has so far co-programmed four editions of Dream City (2015, 2017, 2019, 2022), all focused on creating contextual works of art in the Medina of Tunis, but resonating with a much larger socio-political environment.
 

Khaled Hourani
Palestine

Khaled Mattawa
Libya

A Libyan poet who has obtained his BA in political science from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and then earned a Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing at the University of Indiana and a PhD in English literature at Duke University. He is currently a professor of creative writing and contemporary literature at the University of Michigan.

Mattawa has four published anthologies in English, in addition to several published anthologies of modern Arab poetry translated into English. His most recent publication is Sun on Closed Windows (2017), an anthology of literary works by young Libyan writers which he co-edited with Laila Moghrabi.

Mattawa has been awarded numerous literary prizes and grants for his poetry and his translations, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts award. In 2014, he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. After the Libyan Revolution in 2011, Mattawa co-founded, with his wife, the Libyan artist Reem Gibriel, the Arete Foundation for Arts and Culture which aims to support and promote the creative arts in Libya.

Mahasen Ajam
Lebanon

Marwa Helmy
Egypt

Marwa Helmy is a cultural manager, a researcher in cultural policies and a UNESCO expert on the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. Marwa has practiced the work in the field of cultural management for more than 13 years. She has occupied several positions in different cultural organizations in Egypt and the Arab region: As programs manager at the British Council, Egypt, and supervisor of the program “Towards a Creative Economy Framework in Egypt”, as a deputy director and regional programs manager in Culture Resource and as programs coordinator at Cairo Jesuit Cultural Center. She was also a member in the Egyptian National Group for Cultural Policy from 2011 to 2014.

Following the Egyptian Revolution in 2011, Marwa became involved in several civil society cultural initiatives. She was a founding member of the Al-Fann Midan (Art is a Square) initiative which was dedicated to the principle of utilizing public spaces in Egypt for artistic and cultural purposes. She was also a member of the Coalition for Independent Culture in Egypt.

Marwa is a PhD candidate in cultural policies. After studying French literature at the Faculty of Letters in Ain Shams University, she earned an MA in cultural management and media from Senghor University, Alexandria. She also holds a diploma in journalism and media from the French Press Institute (IFP) and the Training and Development Center for Journalists (CFPJ), Panthéon-Assas University, Paris.

Mary Elias
Syria

Mary Elias is a university professor who taught at a number of educational institutions including the University of Damascus, the Higher Institute for Dramatic Arts in Damascus and St. Joseph’s University in Beirut. She has authored a number of publications and translations in the field of theatre, including a critical dictionary of theatre in three languages (in cooperation with others), an anthology of modern French drama and research papers on theatre. She has managed a number of training workshops in various fields, most significantly in dramaturgy.

She has also directed a number of development projects in Syria, chief of which are the interactive theatre programmes in government schools and in rural Syria and the development of the youth theatre.

Milica Ilic
Belgium

Milica Ilic is a cultural worker specialized in transnational cooperation in contemporary performing arts. She was coordinator and one of the initiators of RESHAPE, an experimental research and development project looking at reimagining the art sector’s organizational models in Europe and southern Mediterranean. Previously Artistic Advisor at Onda, the French office for contemporary performing arts circulation, Communication and Administration Manager at IETM, international network for contemporary performing arts and Project Manager at the University of Arts in Belgrade. As a freelance consultant, she supports international cooperation, training, research and evaluation projects in the field of culture and she regularly writes and edits articles.

Mohamed Al-Daradji
Iraq

Mohamed studied Film and Television Production at the Media Academy in Hilversum, before traveling to the UK to complete his two Masters degrees in Cinematography and Directing at the Northern Film School in Leeds.  He is the co-founder of the multi-award winning Human Film, a UK & Netherlands based feature film production company. In 2003, Mohamed made his first feature film, Ahlaam, which was screened at over 125 International Film Festivals, received over 23 awards, and represented Iraq for Oscar and Golden Globe Consideration in 2007.
His 2nd feature film, Son of Babylon (2010) was screened at the Sundance Film Festival and Berlin IFF, receiving the Amnesty Award and the Peace Prize, followed by a BIFA, Netpac and 30 other international awards. In 2010 Mohamed received the award of Variety’s Middle Eastern Filmmaker of the year when his documentary In My Mother’s Arms was premiered at Toronto IFF and won the Asia Pacific Screen Academy Award for best Documentary.
In 2013 he began to work on his 5th feature, In The Sands of Babylon, which was launched at Abu Dhabi IFF and won as the Best Film from the Arab World. In 2017, he developed his fiction film, The Journey, which was selected for Cannes IFF, L’ATELIER 2011 and received the Kocca Development Award at Busan IFF.
Alongside his work as a filmmaker Mohamed established the Iraqi independent film center which has as a main objective is to raise the level of cinematic culture in Iraq.

Mohamed El Amine Moumine
Morocco

Dr. Moumine is a Professor at Hassan II University of Casablanca and the Managing Director of the Moulay Rachid Cultural Center. He has organized a good number of national and international academic, cultural and artistic events. He is an active member in various academic research groups and associations specialized in artistic, cultural and humanitarian issues. He is a founding member of la Fondation des Arts Vivants, vice president of Sister Cities International-Morocco and president of Moroccan Association for Cultural Policies. Among his fields of interest are cultural policies, creative industries, cultural leadership and performing arts.

Mohamed Idoumou
Mauritania

Poet, journalist, filmmaker, cultural director and trainer in the management of cultural projects and organizations. He holds an MA in literature and translation from the Faculty of Letters and Humanities at the University of Nouakchott and an MA in communication and public relations from the National School of Administration, Journalism and Justice. He also studied creative and documentary filmmaking and directed nine documentary films. He serves as the president of the Mauritian Poetry Forum, the CEO of ZM Communication and a member of the Fajr program which funds civil society projects. He also served as the director of the House of Filmmakers from 2013 to 2016, the director of the Nouakchott International Short Film Festival from 2009 to 2016 and the coordinator of the National Group for Cultural Policies from 2013 to 2016.

Mourad Kadiri
Morocco

Mourad Kadiri is a poet, a researcher and a cultural activist. He obtained a BA in Arabic Language and Literature from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Mohammed V University, Rabat, followed by an advanced studies diploma in the Structure of Poetic Discourse in Middle East and North Africa from the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Mohammed V University, Rabat. In 2012, he earned a PhD in modern Moroccan literature from the Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University in Fez.
A Moroccan cultural activist since the 1980s, Kadiri is a cultural management trainer, a researcher in cultural policies, the director of the House of Poetry in Morocco, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Moroccan Association for Cultural Policies. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Moroccan Coalition for Culture and the Arts; former studies advisor with the Ministry of Education, Vocational Training, Higher Education and Scientific Research; and former advisor to the Moroccan Minister of Culture.
Kadiri’s writings are primarily dedicated to poetry and literary research. He has published four poetry anthologies: Letters of the Palm (1995); Spinning Girl (2005); Bird of God (2007); and Tramway (2015). He has also published a critical study, Literary aesthetics in the Modern Moroccan Poetry (2012). His poetry has been translated in several languages and some of his poems have appeared in anthologies of Moroccan poetry.

Mourad Sakli
Tunisia

An oud player and composer, Sakli obtained a Ph.D. in musicology from Sorbonne University in 1995 and a certificate in cultural economy from Paris Dauphine University in 2013. He has served as director of Ennejma Ezzahra palace, which houses the Centre for Arab and Mediterranean Music, the director of the International Festival of Carthage and as Tunisian minister of culture. He has contributed to many workshops and training courses in cultural management. He is the founder and CEO of Altissimo Consulting which specialises in cultural engineering.

Reem Gibriel
Libya

Roger Assaf
Lebanon

A theater director and actor, he served as the director of the University Theater Center (C.U.E.D) at the Lebanese University from 1965 to 1968 and began work as a director at the Beirut Theater in 1966. In 1968, he co-founded the Beirut Atelier for Theater with Nidal al-Achkar, and he founded the Hakawati Theater in 1978. He worked as a professor at the Lebanese University’s Institute for Fine Arts from 1966 to 2004 and as a professor at the Saint Joseph University from 1990 to 2016. In 1999, he founded the Shams Cultural Cooperative for Youth in Theater and Culture and he directed the Shams Youth Festival from 2000 to 2005. In 2005, he founded the Sunflower Cultural Centre. The recipient of numerous awards and honours, he was awarded Best Director and the Critics Award for Ayoub’s Memoirs in the Cairo International Forum in 1994, the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2008 and the Order of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture in 2013. Among his published works are: Dramatization: Masks of the City (1985), The Biography of the Theater: Luminaries and Works (2008-2012) and Theater in History (2017).

Sayyid Mahmoud
Egypt

Journalist and poet. He is editor-in-chief of al-Qahira, a newspaper produced by the Egyptian Ministry of Education, and has also served as literary editor for numerous publications such as the Egyptian al-Ahram organization as well as for several independent newspapers. He has also worked as a literary editor and freelance correspondent for many Arabic language news outlets abroad, such as al-Hayat (London), al-Akhbar (Beirut) and Reuters Press Agency. In 2001, he was awarded First Prize for the “best news coverage” by the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate. He was a jury member for the Sawiris Literary Award and for the Arab Journalist Award in Dubai (in the cultural journalism category). In 2013, a special tribute was paid to him by the Egyptian Writers Conference on Media Professionals. He has also written the screenplays for a number of documentary films and he is a founding member of the Arab Group for Cultural Policies. Among his published works are the Shadow Recitation (poetry, 2014), To Question is Seditious (co-authored with the Bahraini poet Qassem Haddad) and A New Page: The Literary Forum for Arab Youth (2005)

Sulayman Al Bassam
Kuwait

Award winning playwright and director Sulayman Al Bassam is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading contemporary Arab theatre makers. Writing in English and directing theatre in Arabic, English, French and German, Al Bassam has presented his creations at leading international venues across the world including the Brooklyn Academy of Music (USA), The Holland Festival (EU), and Tokyo International Festival (Japan).  Since 2015, Al Bassam’s works have become more exploratory in content and form with a focus on ancient texts and the apotheosis of female protagonists.

The Sulayman Al-Bassam Theatre, SABAB, is an independent, international touring ensemble of theatre practitioners, musicians and visual artists. Working internationally across national and cultural boundaries, SABAB uses theatre to engage with issues of identity, history, language and culture, and seeks to redraw parameters of knowledge challenging audiences to make meaning in new and unexpected ways. Al Bassam’s projects are characterized by a radical approach to text, bold production styles and an uncompromising engagement with issues concerning the contemporary Arab world and the West. He lives between Paris and Kuwait.

Therese Ghobriel
Egypt

Therese has over 15 years experience in the field of management of non-profit cultural organizations. Her professional interests range from financial resource management and capacity building to developing the organizational structures and ensuring the sustainability of cultural organizations.

Therese began work as a cultural advisor  in 2012, since which time she became involved in developing and restructuring the financial systems of many cultural organizations in the Arab region. Towards this end, she provided training courses to the staff members concerned with the financial management of these organizations and she also offered technical support at individual levels.

She earned a Masters in the management of cultural organizations from HEC Montreal and a BA in architecture from Alexandria University.

Rana Yazaji
Syria

Rasha Salah
Palestine/Lebanon

A cofounder of Dar El-Nimer for Arts and Culture, she joined the Dar El-Nimer team in 2015 and became the executive director for this cultural space when it was launched in Beirut in 2016. A graduate from the University of Bordeaux in social and cultural development, she served as the grants manager for the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) from 2010 to 2015. Salah is the author of Next Year in Tiberias: Letters from a Young Palestinian Woman from Lebanon (2016) and she co-directed the documentary Palestinian Women: Forgotten by Peace with Francis Bouchet and Gilles Signard.

Yassin Adnan
Morocco

Writer, journalist and media personality, Adnan is a member of the board of trustees of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF). His novel Hot Maroc was longlisted for the IPAF in 2017. Involved in Arabic cultural journalism since the 1990s, he has hosted the cultural program Masharif on Morocco’s “Channel from 2006 to January 2019, and recently he began to prepare and present the cultural program Beit Yassin (Yassin’s House) on the al-Ghad channel. In addition to several poetry anthologies (Mannequin, The Pavement of Resurrection, I Can Barely See, Notebook of a Passer-by and The Road to the Paradise of Hell) and several short story collections (Who Believes the Messages?, The Shadow Apples, and The Girls’ Delight with the Light Rain), he co-authored Marrakesh: Open Secrets with Saad Sarhan and directed the collectively-authored work, in French, Marrakech: Lieux Evanescents. He is the editor of the English language Marrakech Noir, a short story series published by Akashic Books, New York.