Mujaawarah 2026

Mujaawarah 2026 was a gathering of Shami creatives in Leeds and an experiment in what it might mean to hold a mujaawarah within the constraints of a Western, UK context and its institutions.

The project developed from my own feelings of isolation from other Palestinian and Shami artists, and a desire to create opportunities for artists connected to Bilad ash-Sham to encounter one another’s practices, exchange ideas, build relationships and spend time together.

Palestinian and Shami communities of practice are dispersed across different geographical and political contexts. Israeli occupation, histories of colonial conquest across Bilad ash-Sham and SWANA, restrictions on movement and the displacement of communities have all contributed to separating artists from one another. Palestinian artists also work within cultural contexts in which their work can be cancelled, under-platformed or made conditional upon funding structures that restrict political expression. These circumstances can make it difficult to build networks, sustain artistic careers and maintain cultural practices across generations and geographies.

Mujaawarah brought together artists from Europe and Palestine working across performance, dance, theatre and film. The project developed over approximately 18 months, beginning with my reaching out to Shami artists to ask whether they were interested in building new relationships with one another. During this period we held four online gatherings of approximately two hours each, creating space to learn about one another’s practices and approaches, and to begin spending time together even when meeting physically was not possible.

Eighteen people took part in the in-person mujaawarah in Leeds from 14–19 July 2026. Across the week, members of the group led workshops and talks, exchanged practices, ate together and shared space.

Mujaawarah

The concept of the mujaawarah was proposed by one of the participants during an online gathering. They introduced us to the term through the work of Palestinian educator Munir Fasheh.

Mujaawarah can be translated approximately as “neighbouring”. Fasheh describes it as an informal, non-hierarchical gathering in which people learn from one another’s experiences, knowledge and practices without reproducing conventional institutional relationships between teacher and learner. In his writing, he positions the mujaawarah in opposition to the institution and its forms of authority.

This became an important proposition for the project, but also a difficult one.

The institutional structures within which I was operating as the initiator of the gathering — and through which its funding was administered — inevitably shaped what was possible. My own position as somebody embedded within UK structures of racial, professional and academic power also affected how I approached the work. I tried to develop an ethical and caretaking approach to curating and holding the gathering, while remaining attentive to the contradictions involved in attempting to create a non-hierarchical space through institutional structures.

Activities

Across the week we held five artist-led workshops and three public events: a film screening; a dabke presentation and workshop; and a rehearsed reading of a play. We also held three talks and an industry-focused lunch that brought members of the group into conversation with producers and representatives from arts venues and organisations across Yorkshire, the North of England and London.

The mujaawarah was nourishing in the ways it brought Shami artists together and allowed us to experience one another’s practices, knowledge and company. There were moments of connection, experimentation and magic, and the gathering created the beginnings of new relationships between artists and with people working within UK cultural institutions.

It also exposed tensions that remain important to the work: questions about how spaces for Palestinian and Shami artists are safeguarded; who holds responsibility and power within a gathering; the limits of attempting to create non-hierarchical spaces within institutions structured by racism and unequal power; and how relationships created through short-term funding can be sustained after that funding ends.

Rather than resolving these questions, Mujaawarah made them more visible. They now form part of an ongoing enquiry into how gathering, artistic exchange and embodied practices might create forms of relation and solidarity across dispersed communities.