Culture Resource and Action for Hope are launching an emergency initiative to support Sudanese artists and protect cultural resources in Sudan. This initiative started two months after the war in Sudan broke out, causing the death, and displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians, including a large number of artists and writers who lost their homes, properties, and livelihoods, besides those who got injured or killed. This war also led to the destruction of several cultural resources, including collections of artworks, libraries and archives featuring important materials; noting that a considerable number of these resources are still at risk of destruction and theft.
This initiative includes different components, such as providing support to artists and writers who have been directly affected by the war, identifying and documenting the cultural and artistic resources at risk in Sudan and exploring ways to protect them, providing workplaces and meeting spaces for Sudanese artists who had to leave Sudan recently, and training a group of cultural actors from Sudan and South Sudan on protecting cultural rights in times of war and crisis. The initiative will announce the opening of its different components successively, and the relevant information will be published on both institutions’ websites and social media pages.
This initiative is the result of solidarity among several organizations, including the DOEN Foundation in the Netherlands and PEN America’s Artists at Risk Connection. It is also the result of a collaboration between a number of cultural organizations in the Arab region, including Sudan Film Factory, the Arab Digital Expression Foundation (ADEF), Ettijahat – Independent Culture, and the Sudan Artist Fund (SAF).
