A learning journey reimagining support for
5 countries | 12 oranizations | 18 months
Culture in the Civic Space in the MENA Region is an 18-month learning journey that began in autumn 2024, bringing together twelve arts and culture organizations from Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon. It supports participating organizations to explore how they can contribute to an overall healthier field – through long-term roles of care, connection, and support across the field.
This program begins with a shift in perspective: from organisational survival to field health. From reacting to crisis, to nurturing conditions for imagination, collaboration, and change.
Why This, Why Now?
Phases in which the survival of an organization takes precedence over its goals and ambitions are likely familiar to many non-profit organizations around the world. Financial instability and political repression are some of the triggers for such dynamics. In some contexts, however, this is not merely a temporary phase but an ongoing reality – one that tends to worsen rather than improve. Financial scarcity, censorship, and restrictive legal frameworks often become the “normal” conditions under which these organizations operate.
In many parts of the MENA region, arts and culture organizations operating in civic space are no strangers to navigating such complexity and tension. Years of political repression, financial precarity, and restricted civic space have shaped a reality where the urgent constantly overshadows the long-term. The work of cultural practice continues – but often with little room to reflect, adapt, or dream forward – and making space for what could be.
So, it is long overdue to change perspective and support a transition towards a more resilient and positive future. Changing perspective away from the current system requires the practice of imagination – which is most rooted in the fields of arts and culture. In this spirit, the program Culture in the Civic Space in the MENA Region was launched in Autumn 2024 with an invitation: to explore how arts and culture organizations might move from a focus on organizational survival toward a deeper investment in the field they are part of. While this shift may not seem intuitive, it is deeply relevant. This became clear in the responses to our invitation to join the program, which placed at its core the intention to explore and strengthen solidarity, and to understand how such an organizational shift can take shape.
How We Are Learning and Testing
To support this inquiry on both a conceptual and practical level, the program is shaped around shared learning questions and focused experimentation.
Together with the twelve organisations, we are asking:
What role can the organization I work for play in supporting its broader field — and what is my individual contribution to that effort?
How is this field currently shaped, and what forms of support are needed to strengthen its health and move it toward a more desired state?
What alternative forms of collaboration and connection could help facilitate such a development?
- One of the key approaches of the program is to create spaces for imagination — spaces where participants can observe and listen without being overwhelmed by the crises surrounding them. These moments are also used to explore new or evolving roles that help sustain a field of actors working in resistance to dominant structures.
A metaphor that resonated strongly with the group was that of a marine ecosystem — offering language and imagery to think about diversity,
interdependence, and resilience. This helped participants reflect on the types of support they might test or embody within their own fields.
What emerged early in the process is that meaningful change happens across multiple, interconnected levels. Throughout the journey, learning is unfolding on at least three levels:
- The individual level – where participants reflect on their own roles, values, and capacities.
- The organizational level – where teams test new approaches and refine their strategies for support.
- The ecosystem and civic space level – where relationships are mapped, gaps identified, and small-scale experiments tried out to influence broader conditions.