Arab American Cultural Heritage Programming

We hosted a showcase that lasted for two full days and evenings of new work by new writers at the Open Book space. The 8 staged readings, included 8 talk backs by humanities scholars. We had over 2 dozen artists participate in the showcase, and the total audience for these events was over 500 people. It was an extremely intensive and succesful event that brought together writers, actors, humanities scholars, directors, and audience members from all different backgrounds together, and was extremely succesful!

This is what was proposed:
1) We will teach the tradition of Arabic drumming to community members, and present this music to the Twin Cities in a series of outdoor concerts open to all. This will include audience talkbacks by local SWANA Humanities scholars.

We spent the summer of 2022 teaching the tradition of Arabic drumming to 12 local drummers. They met weekly from the beginning of June until the end of August, and gave an outdoor concert with talkback to community members. It was a great success with participation from a variety of people. We evaluated our program with surveys that were given online, and also by in person feedback.

2) We will recruit 6 local SWANA (Southwest Asian/North African) community members to work together to develop their writing in a safe and supportive community setting. The product will be presented as staged readings with talkbacks by local SWANA Humanities scholars.

We ended up recruiting 6 local SWANA playwrights (and 3 national playwrights) to participate in weekly writing workshops that were held over zoom from July to December. These workshops resulted in the creation of several new pieces of writing that were developed over this time through discussion and workshop creation.