As part of the EU-funded project “Cash for Work: Promoting Livelihood Opportunities for Urban Youth in Yemen”, UNESCO is organizing the Second Yemeni Youth Culture Forum, which will be held publicly as an open Zoom meeting on Wednesday 16 December 2020 2pm-5pm Sana’a Time (GMT+3).

This second edition of the Forum will offer an open space for consultation and dialogue, bringing together young artists, culture operators and institutions committed to support culture and peacebuilding in Yemen. Participants will share experiences, coordinate on current initiatives and develop informed methods to integrate arts and culture into peace-building efforts. The Forum will raise awareness about the challenges facing arts and culture in Yemen and support the creation of a community of practice for cultural peacebuilding by fostering structured, productive dialogue between artists and peace practitioners.

The event will include planetary discussions, which will be followed by two thematic working groups. The first one is Integrating the Arts into Peacebuilding that will focus on discussing how to adapt technical methods in peacebuilding for artistic aesthetic programs. The second one Empowering the Arts in Yemen will focus on the challenges facing young Yemeni artists in accessing opportunities to produce, distribute, and develop their craft. In addition to the means to empower the arts for advocacy and community reconciliation. Finally, the event will offer access to selected Yemeni art works such as music concert by the Yemeni House of Music, a photo exhibition and a new song produced by UNESCO and RNW Media, with funding from the EU.

Thus, the Forum is an opportunity to strengthen the connections within the Yemeni arts community from the diaspora to support solidarity and new collaborations between stakeholders inside and outside Yemen. These regular exchanges serve as a channel for culture stakeholders to identify common challenges, articulate shared solutions, and facilitate professional networking.

The event will be held in both Arabic and English through simultaneous interpretation to facilitate engagement from relevant Yemeni and international audiences.

Register

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YouTube Streaming

Watch the a streaming of the forum on YouTube

Concept Note

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Agenda

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Panelists

Get to know the speakers in the two panel sessions

Dr. Anna Paolini

Dr. Anna Paolini is UNESCO Representative in the Arab States of the Gulf and Yemen and Director of the UNESCO Doha Office since September 2013. Prior appointments include Head of Office in Uzbekistan and Jordan. She holds a MA in Architecture and in Urban and Regional Planning, a post-graduate degree in Development Cooperation and a Ph.D in Territorial Engineering.

Hans Grundberg

Ambassador Grundberg was appointed as Ambassador of the European Union to Yemen on 1st of September 2019. He is a career diplomat with the Middle East and conflict resolution as his primary focus, often having combined posts both to Swedish and EU missions abroad. His previous posts include Cairo, Jerusalem as well as Brussels where he chaired the Middle East Gulf Working Group of the European Council during the Swedish EU-presidency of 2009. Before taking up his current position, Ambassador Grundberg was heading the Gulf Division at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Stockholm.

Fuad Ali Al-Shargabi

Fuad Ali Al-Shargabi is a Yemeni composer born in Taiz. He is also a researcher on intangible heritage. He is the President and Founder of the Yemeni House for Music and Arts, a Sana’a based organization founded in 2007 and working on the preservation and promotion of the Yemeni traditional music, spreading musical awareness, and teaching musical instruments.

Ruba Mimi

Ruba Mimi is the Middle East Regional Manager at RNW Media. She is a media professional with broad experience in building and implementing media projects for social change in fragile and conflict settings. For more than 7 years, Ruba has been leading digital media projects in Yemen, focused on multiple thematic programs such as youth inclusion, social cohesion, inclusive governance and sexual and reproductive health and rights. Ruba holds a master degree in political communication from University of Amsterdam and a bachelor degree in media and political science.

Maged Alkholidy

Maged Alkholidy is the Chairman of Youth Without Borders Organization and a researcher on youth, peacebuilding and community peace topics. He is a co-author of several publications on youth, peacebuilding, arts and security such as The Role of Youth in Peacebuilding in Yemen (April 2020). He is currently co-authoring a research study on The Role of Arts in Peacebuilding Yemen. Maged holds a master degree of Arts in English from Taiz University.

Dr. Norbert Spitz

Dr. Norbert Spitz studied sociology at Bielefeld University with focus on sociology of education and music at Nordwestdeutsche Musikakademie in Detmold; PhD in Sociology 1981. As of 1987 employed with Goethe Institute with postings as director of Goethe-Institutes in Khartoum/Sudan, Montreal/Canada, Kabul/Afghanistan, Beirut/Lebanon and Bangkok/Thailand. Between 2013 and 2019, he acted as regional director of the network of Goethe-Institutes in Sub-Saharan Africa based in Johannesburg/South Africa. As of January 2021 until June 2021, he will serve as director of Goethe-Institute Amman/Jordan.

Dr. Björn Technau

Dr. Björn Technau is the coordinator of the Yemen-related projects of the Goethe-Institute Amman, including “Cultural Networks Yemen”, supported by the German Federal Foreign Office. He specializes in international education and intercultural exchange, having held various positions in different contexts and regions, including the US, China, India, and Afghanistan. In his linguistics research, Björn focusses on hate speech and conversation analysis, investigating how slur terms are used in different languages.

Rajaa Bazara

Rajaa Bazara is the British Council’s Projects Manager based in Sana’a. She started working in the British Council as a librarian and information officer, then moved to programme work in 2005 where she managed the Connecting Classrooms Project and English for Education Systems. She is currently managing the arts and cultural programme. Rajaa holds a BA in English from the Faculty of Education at Sana’a University and an Advanced Diploma in Sustainable Business from the London School of Business and Finance in the UK.

Shaima Al-Tamimi

Shaima Al-Tamimi is a Yemeni-Kenyan visual storyteller based in the GCC. Her work is inspired by social and cultural issues reflective of her own personal story. She explores themes relating to patterns and impacts of migration, identity, and culinary culture. Through the mediums of photography, film, and writing - and via a deeply-rooted documentary approach - Shaima merges historical and family archives with present-day portraits and visuals to create vivid narratives, offering a unique perspective on the life stories of her subjects. She is currently a PSJ 2020 Fellow at the Magnum Foundation where she is producing her next audio visual project "Don't get too comfortable". The project received funding from the Doha Film Institute and is an expansion of her last project “As if we never came” supported by the Arab Documentary Photography program via AFAC and the Prince Claus Fund.

Thana Faroq

Thana Faroq is a Yemeni documentary photographer and educator based in the Netherlands. Her work mirrors her life and provides a visual echo of her voice as she gracefully negotiates themes of memory, boundaries, and violence. Thana has a unique approach to working with her subjects in that she regularly returns to them to continue sharing their journey. Many of these migrant, stateless individuals were with Thana during her transitional period.

Kholoud Shaker

Kholoud Shaker is a Business Development and Entrepreneurship Specialist with the Small & Micro Enterprise Promotion Service (SMEPS). SMEPS is the Private Sector development subsidiary of the Social Fund for Development in Yemen. She leads various sector projects ranging from Health, Business Development and Entrepreneurship targeting women and youth in urban and rural areas. She also manages initiatives with Market Systems Development approaches hinging a sense of humanitarian and development nexus in conflict & fragile settings. Moreover, Kholoud is a certified ILO Entrepreneurship Trainer of Trainers.

Nasser Almang

Nasser Almang is a Yemeni American producer, social and cultural activist. He is the founder and CEO of YWT organization. He studied marketing and film making at San Francisco City College. He has 6 years of experience in nonprofit management, media, and campaign management on Social Media. He believes in the power of art, culture, media, and technology to create change that matters.

Shorooq Ramadi

Shorooq Ramadi is a Social and Cultural entrepreneur, founder and adviser of Takween Cultural Club. She is an architect, researcher, writer, and artist. Recently, she has been volunteering to advise the startup cultural initiatives in Hadramout, Yemen.

Abdulrahman Al-Ward

Abdulrahman Al-Ward is a Yemeni filmmaker, documentary filmmaker and screenwriter. He graduated from Sana'a University in 2018 and began his media journey on the YouTube platform by making visual content. In 2018 he started working in the film industry and made his first short documentary "When will you come back?" within Qamra documentary camp. He won the Yemeni YouTuber Award in 2019 for the best content creator, presented by the Bank of Yemen and Kuwait. He has written and directed several TV commercials and now works as a filmmaker, and content maker.

Ahmed Zaouche

Ahmed Zaouche is the manager of the EU-funded Cash for Work Project at UNESCO GCC and Yemen Office (based in Doha). Prior to joining Qatar, he worked at UNESCO HQ and in the field (Maghreb region) where he coordinated large-scale programmes in the fields of Youth, Gender, Culture and Public Policies. He holds a Master Degree in Architecture from Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture and a Master Degree in Urban Planning from Sciences Po Paris.

Mohammed Al-Jaberi

Mohammed Al-Jaberi is the program and communication officer of the EU-funded Cash for Work Project at the UNESCO regional office for the GCC and Yemen. Besides his daily job, Mohammed is an awarded filmmaker focusing on stories from/about Yemen. He holds a bacheler degree from Georgetown University in International Politics and is currently concluding his masters degree in Managmenet of Sustainable Developlment Goals from LUMSA university.

Nabil Munassar

Nabil Munassar is a Culture Heritage Expert in the UNESCO-EU cash for work project. Nabil has more than 20 years of experience in his field working with national and international organizations in Yemen such as General Organization for the Preservation of Historic Cities - Yemen (GOPHCY), GIZ and UNESCO. He holds a master’s degree in engineering science from the Technical University of Georgia.

Sumaia Al-Yazidi

Sumaia Al-Yazidi is a Yemeni living in Qatar. She is a Researcher and Teaching Assistant at Georgetown University in Qatar as well as in the department of Middle Eastern studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. She graduated from the program of Women, Society and Development at Hamad Bin Khalifa University and worked on different research projects about Yemen and Qatar. Currently, Sumaia is an intern in Cash for Work Project.