Fourteen New Production Awards to Support Arts and Culture in the Arab World

In an evening of music and literary readings, Culture Resource announced the winners of the Production Awards Program for Young Creative Arab Artists for 2009. Some of the top artists and academic community attended the evening.

Hanan Haj Ali, Culture Resource’s Artistic Board Chair, said that the Board decided to raise the number of the annual awards to fourteen production awards in order to address the increasing number of applications the organization receives every year. In 2009, Culture Resource received 116 awards applications from fourteen Arab countries. Fourteen awards worth more than 40,000 US Dollars were granted to young artists and writer from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Palestine and Sudan.

The Artistic Board put together five jury committees of well established artists, writers and academics from all over the Arab world to evaluate the applications and recommend awards. This year’s jury committee in literature comprised of: Alya Mamdouh (Iraq), Alaa El Deeb (Egypt) and Anwar Ben Malek (Algeria). In video: Nidal Aldebss (Syria), Michelle Khalifi (Palestine) and Dawoud Abd El Sayed (Egypt). In music: Fathy Salama (Egypt), Khaled Jubran (Palestine) and Charbel Rouhana (Lebanon). In theatre: Menha El Batrawy (Egypt) and Hanan Haj Ali (Lebanon). And finally in visual arts: Bassam El Barouni (Egypt), Abdallah Krroum (Morroco) and Fady Yazigi (Syria).

According to the evaluation of the independent jury committees, the winners of the 2009 Production Awards program are:

[tabs] [tab title=”In Music“]Huda Asfour – Palestine
Salah Ammo – Syria[/tab] [tab title=”In Literature“]Rania Ma’moun – Sudan
Mohamed Al Aktash – Egypt
Soumer Daghistani – Syria[/tab] [tab title=”In Theatre“]Osama Ghanam – Syria
Rafat Alzakout – Syria
Samaa Ibrahim Ali – Egypt[/tab] [tab title=”In Video“]Rami Nihawi – Lebanon
Rafik Omrani – Tunis[/tab] [tab title=”In Visual Arts“]Shaima Aziz – Egypt
Raed A. Issa – Palestine
Mohamed Said Baalbaki – Lebanon[/tab] [/tabs]