Deadline: 17-Jul-25
Applications are now open for the Abbara Program to support independent cultural initiatives and organizations as key actors in building a meaningful cultural sector for their societies.
The Arts and Culture sector has endured many challenges in the past decade. In addition to warfare and strife, foreign occupation and interventions, and political upheavals and economic crises that jeopardise the stability the region as a whole, the sector has suffered the absence of the necessary governmental support for arts and culture in most Arab countries, the lack of measures to mitigate the impact of crises on cultural actors and the scarcity of funding sources offering unrestricted core funding.
In response to such circumstances, Abbara supports cultural entities by helping them build the capacities to render them administratively viable, thereby ensuring their sustainability and ability to evolve independently, and in a manner that builds on local contexts.
The program also encourages participant organizations to exchange their knowledge and experiences and to experiment cooperative endeavours.
The program goals include: to support collective cultural work by training, equipping and guiding the development of independent cultural initiatives and organizations to enable them to devise the most successful structures for cultural work in diverse social, political and cultural contexts; to contribute to the development of the cultural sector by testing effective models and approaches to organizational sustainability, in general, and financial sustainability, in particular, with a focus on ensuring the stability and sustainability of independent cultural initiatives and organizations; and to address the common challenges to independent cultural work across the Arab region by helping cultural organizations and initiatives forge links and mutual support frameworks, enabling them to share learning and expertise and to develop the means to lay the foundations for a vibrant cultural ecosystem capable of bringing constructive change to its local and regional contexts.
Funding Information
Financial support of €22,000 per initiative/organization.
Duration
The duration of the Abbara program rounds ranges between 24-30 months depending on the needs of each organization.
What kind of support does the program offer?
- Training in strategic planning and organizational management
- Technical assistance in diverse fields (governance, financial management, resources and fundraising, communications.)
- Networking and collaborations.
Eligibility Criteria
This program is open to independent, non-governmental artistic and cultural initiatives and organizations from diverse disciplines (cinema, performing arts, literature, publishing, archiving, visual arts, music, podcasts, cultural management, cultural policies, cultural heritage, research and knowledge production) on the condition that they are founded and directed by artists and/or cultural actors from an Arab country (regardless of ethnic origin or citizenship status).
The scope of work of the initiative/organization should be mainly focused on the Arab region. Arab cultural and artistic initiatives and organizations abroad may be considered as long as their work serves artistic and cultural production in Arabic.
Initiatives and groups that are not officially registered in the country where they operate may be considered as long as they are able to carry out their activities within established and transparent legal frameworks.
The applicant must be a small or midsize initiative/organization (with a total of expenditures or income ranging between 50,000 and 500,000 US Dollars) and it or its members should have no less than three years work experience in the arts and culture.
The organization/initiative must not be a previous beneficiary of an Abbara grant.
For more information, visit Mawred.
