18:45-20:00    PUBLIC KEYNOTE sensing dissensus

Yazan Khalili

Venue: The Glasshouse, HDK-Valand, in the courtyard of Vasagatan 50, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Attendance is free, booking recommended.

The Question of Funding is a growing collective of cultural producers and community organizers from Palestine. By producing, documenting, accumulating, and disseminating resources, experience, and knowledge with their wider community, it aims to rethink the economy of funding and how it affects cultural production both in Palestine and the world. The collective was formed in 2019 by a group of individuals engaged in different facets of the cultural sector, from working for non-governmental cultural institutions dependent on international funding (such as Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Grassroots Al-Quds, and the Popular Art Center) and foundations and cultural centres (including Al-Basta Theatre, Dalia Association, and Rawa Fund), to practicing as independent practitioners. Born out of informal and open encounters within Palestine’s wider arts community, The Question of Funding sought to question, debate, and find solutions to the prevalent constrictive international funding models on which Palestinian cultural institutions continue to depend.

Central to these encounters was the recurrent and urgent question, “How to Work Together?” In response, The Question of Funding aims to bring together individuals and collectives actively working to find alternative economic structures that can resist the physical and geographical boundaries and restrictions in Palestine and, hopefully, beyond it. To this end, the collective is currently developing a community-governed economic system that will facilitate and connect local production from diverse sectors, such as agriculture, arts and culture, and small creative businesses, to foster social development and unity.