Deadline: 12-Dec-2025
The Ecologies of Culture — a new, four-year program co-funded by the European Union and led by the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture – AFAC, in partnership with Oxfam, Megaphone, and Echos Electrik — invites applicants from inside and outside artistic practice to answer this question.
Environmental degradation, water scarcity, gender inequality, and digital transformation are no longer issues that can be solved in isolation. They form an intricate web of social, political, and ecological realities. Yet amid these collaborations between scientists, policymakers, and civil society, the role of artists and cultural practitioners is often overlooked.
The program is inspired by the idea that culture functions like an ecosystem — a living, evolving network of relationships between people, places, memories, technologies, and environments. Just as coral reefs depend on delicate interconnections to thrive, cultural ecosystems rely on collaboration, creativity, and resilience. Through this lens, Ecologies of Culture invites participants to dive deep into their local contexts to uncover how culture can contribute to collective solutions for shared global challenges.
Creative Placemaking focuses on community-centered projects that use arts and culture to transform shared spaces and strengthen social ties. Up to 22 projects across Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, and Tunisia will receive grants of up to EUR 35,000 each. Eligible applicants include artists, collectives, curators, arts organizations, and civil society groups that have experience in cultural programming. The projects must be completed within 24 months from the signing of the grant agreement, with no extensions permitted.
Meanwhile, Creative Labs aims to support interdisciplinary projects that blend the arts with other fields such as science, technology, and education. This component seeks to foster innovation and experimentation, helping participants co-create digital or hybrid solutions that address pressing issues in new ways. Up to 10 projects will be awarded funding of up to EUR 65,000 each. Applications must involve at least two co-creators — one from the arts and another from a different professional field — to encourage genuine cross-sector collaboration.
Through both components, Ecologies of Culture emphasizes inclusivity, imagination, and sustainability. It offers a platform for artists and cultural practitioners to collaborate with scientists, engineers, environmentalists, and educators to reimagine how culture can contribute to social and environmental transformation.
By inviting participants to “dive” into the metaphorical coral reef of culture — a place of constant motion, interdependence, and renewal — the program encourages a vision of culture not just as expression, but as an active force in shaping our shared future. In doing so, Ecologies of Culture redefines what it means to address global challenges, showing that creativity is not peripheral to change but essential to imagining and sustaining it.
For more information, visit AFAC.