Fifteen cultural organisations from six Arab countries (Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Mauritania, Egypt and Tunisia) met with 15 cultural organisations from European countries (Finland, Italy, United Kingdom, France, Albania, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Hungary and Northern Ireland) in the five-day Partner Forum for the fourth round of the Tandem/Shaml program. Held in Amman (Jordan) from 14 to 18 September 2016, the meeting enabled the cultural directors representing participating organisations to work together to formulate proposals for bilateral cooperative project between partners from different regions.
Culture Resource’s Tandem/Shaml Program Director, Rim Khattab, underscored the importance of the program for cultural organisations in the Arab world. “The program lays the foundations for long term partnerships between European and Arab cultural organisations, and develops a network of support and cooperation that embraces all participants of the Tandem program,which is now in its fifth year,” she said. “The value of this program resides in the unique approach it brings to bear in cultural management training, as it focuses on building collaborative projects rather than on just the artistic or cultural product of the project,” Khattab added.
Tandem/Shaml is an initiative launched in 2011 by an initiative from the European Cultural Foundation (Netherlands) and MitOst (Germany) in collaboration with Culture Resource (Arab Region) and with the support of the Robert Bosch Stiftung (Germany), the DOEN foundation (Netherlands) and Mimeta (Norway). The program supports the development and implementation of experimental and long term collaborations between producers of change in the Arab region and Europe.
