Our Network for Cultural Outreach project started with a simple, poetic, socio-political, and artistic wish: to tour with theatre, dance, clowning, music, etc., in all Lebanese regions.
We belong to a small country by the Mediterranean sea that underwent a civil war and turbulent, if not barbaric, regional turmoil. As a people, we were segregated de facto for years in regions and localities, where it became increasingly difficult to meet, in our differences and similarities. Public spaces are scarce, and our State lacks any vision, program, or policy in the field of culture to make it accessible, decentralised, and professionalised.
The economic and political total collapse since 2019 made it worse. It is in this context that three entities, YAZAN, Yaraqa, and Clown Me In created an alliance and applied to the All-Around Culture Program funded by the EU.
We were thinking of ways to tour throughout the country while joining forces and resources, benefiting from a common executive team, and developing ways of working together in brainstorming, curating, and achieving our purpose.
We decided to put together three pilot tours and, in parallel, research and record data about the different regions, either from direct experience (the tours) or from benchmarking. This information would all be gathered as an online, open-source, ultimately interactive website that any entity or individual, either local or international, could access when interested in touring in the country with their works and productions.
For example, an artist would like to perform in the city of Zahle, in the Bekaa. What are the venues available, either indoors or outdoors? Who do they contact? Where do they rent equipment or chairs? How do they communicate their event to the locals? Are there local artists they could meet and team up with? Where to find an affordable room and board? Etc.
We formed a team, and our field researcher hit the road to start answering those questions. Our first tour was planned in the Bekaa region, specifically in a cluster formed of Baalbek, Zahle, Aanjar, and Riyaq. Our teams of technicians, artists, and line producers could meet each other (around 30 people), travel easily from one town to another, and live, within three to four days, a wonderful experience of sharing a moment of life, performances, and encounters.
Apart from bridging culture and regions, it was clear from the start that the Network for Cultural Outreach had many other roles, one of which was empowering Lebanese artists by providing them with work and professional experience on a larger scale. Another role was to provide the regions (towns, villages) with a cultural experience they usually lacked, as touring with performing arts is expensive and rare. But we were also looking for ways to economically and touristically empower local beneficiaries that were collaborating with us by providing services, businesses, or networking information. The idea was to sometimes put small or underrated localities on a cultural map, along with the touristic aspect. To this effect, we teamed up on the following tours with touristic operators that included our performances in their touristic program, offering visitors from the capital or other regions a unique added-value to their discovery experience.
In the summer of 2022, the Beirut blast was still on everyone’s skin. Beirut wasn’t recovering, neither were we. We never forget, as a large group travelling, the solace we felt driving on the large Bekaa roads, along crops and plains, feeling the dry wind on our faces, and performing in imposing public spaces (Aanjar), temples (Baalbeck), lovely streets (Zahle, Riyaq), meeting an impressive crowd that was just thrilled to see dance, theatre, or clown shows in their towns after a few years of haze and loss.
Some members of our teams had never seen the Baalbek temple, had never been to Zahle or Aanjar. Those young practitioners came from the South, the North, Kesserouane, or even from the Bekaa itself and still had never thought of moving around. We were truly proud to bring together people of different backgrounds around an artistic, albeit life, experience.
A year later, we toured in Lebanon’s second city, Tripoli (North Lebanon), and in Koura: Amioun and Anfeh. Each town, each experience, was so different. A part of our endeavour was also studying and adapting to different performance situations: outdoors/indoors, equipment facilities/none, cooperative municipality/not, audience engagement, extent of interested partners, and collaborations. And within all these differences, we only knew that our presence, our work, was necessary, as the audience’s feedback was greatly rewarding.
After our tour in the North, we intended to tour in the South. Our field researcher hit the road again to gather info and map out the region, until the Ain el Heloue camp problems started. At this point, we switched our destination to the Metn region and toured in Mtein, Mrouj, Freyke, and Cornet Chehouan – closer to the capital and still totally unknown to a great part of our teams.
By then, we had gathered enough experience in managing our program, sharing the load of tasks, establishing local partnerships while still in awe of the ever-new experience – each town having its own flavour, challenges, awesomeness.
In June 2023, the North. In September 2023: Metn. Our contract with the All-Around Culture program ended a month later. We had benefited from a mentor (amazing Tara Hemez), from a workshop in horizontal collaborative processes in Berlin, from advice from MitOst, from financial support to hire experts to serve our entities, and from the opportunity to fulfil that simple wish: decentralising performing arts.
Some members of our teams had never seen the Baalbek temple, had never been to Zahlé or Aanjar. Those young practitioners came from the South, the North, Kesserouane or even from the Bekaa itself – and still had never had the chance to move around. We were truly proud of bringing together people of different backgrounds around an artistic, life experience.
A few months later, we toured in Lebanon’s second city, Tripoli (North Lebanon) and in Koura: Amioun and Anfeh. Each town, each experience, was so different. A part of our endeavour was also studying and adapting to different performance situations: outdoors/indoors, equipment facilities/none, cooperative municipality/not, audience engagement, extent of interested partners and collaborations..
And within all these differences, we only knew that our presence, our work, was necessary – as the audience’s feedback was greatly rewarding.
After our tour in the North, we intended to tour in the South. Our field researcher hit the road again to gather data and map out the region… until the Ain el Helwe camp violence erupted. At this point, we switched our destination to the Metn region, and toured in Mtein, Mrouj, Freyke and Cornet Chehouan – closer to the capital, and still, totally unknown to a great part of our teams.
By then we had gathered enough experience in managing our program, of sharing the load of tasks, of establishing local partnerships – while still in awe with the ever new experience – each town having its own flavour, challenges, awesomeness.
June 2023, North. September 2023: Metn. Our contract with the All-Around Culture program ended a month later. We had benefited from a mentor (amazing Tara Hemez), from a workshop in horizontal collaborative processes in Berlin, from personalised advice from MitOst, from financial support to hire experts to serve our entities.. and had had the opportunity to fulfil that simple wish: decentralising performing arts.
We are archiving and presenting our two-years length work and numbers on our website, as well as the open-source database, in the hope that we pursue our mission while becoming a growing community of performers, cultural entities and stakeholders interested in widening their professional, artistic, economic scope and horizon.
