Atelier Aqaba & Amman: Connecting festivals from the region and beyond
The Atelier Aqaba & Amman brought together festival makers from around the world, all beautiful people in their minds and souls. This week of learnings and exchanges in Jordan will inevitably mark our lives in the future: it forged new connections, inspired friendships, and reminded us of our shared responsibility in a rapidly changing world.
The Ateliers for Young Festival Managers by The Festival Academy are often described as life-changing experiences, and I now understand why. For one week, I left my team at the European Festivals Association (EFA) to integrate the one of The Festival Academy (TFA) and live my very first Atelier. It’s difficult to put forward everything I’ve experienced and learned in one article. I hope this attempt summarises and conveys some of the insights and impressions that struck me the most.
The role of festivals and festival makers
The Atelier Aqaba & Amman took place in Jordan from 21 till 28 September 2025, hosted by IDEA Festival, Studio 8 and Wujud. It brought together 46 participants, mentors, facilitators, and TFA team members coming from 31 countries and 6 continents. Most importantly there were many coming from the Arab countries and wider SWANA region with representatives from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kurdistan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and Yemen. This remarkable diversity made it clear how vital it is to create a regional hub and presentation platform for the arts and artists.
Guided by 3 strong women as facilitators - Vigdís Jakobsdóttir (Cultural strategist and theatre director - Iceland), Alia Alzougbi (Shubbak Festival - Lebanon/ UK) and Sally Shalabi (Storyteller - Jordan), we’ve all reflected together on the purpose of festivals and festival making through many different working exercises in plenary or in small groups and joint feedback moments to tackle some important questions: who do festivals serve, what do they stand for, which challenges are they facing, how can festivals tackle censorship and self-censorship, how to nurture meaningful and lasting collaborations, how can they be more inclusive, who owns the narratives when funding comes from funders outside of your country or continent, how can festivals take the lead and initiate change?
The collective discussion was nourished by different panels very rich in terms of information, bringing insightful perspectives on curating context, building communities and disruptive models of collaboration, with contributions from speakers across the region and other continents. Research presentations completed the content by shedding light on the local arts scene and the essence of festival making.
The Atelier was also made of several introspective moments meant to lead us to look at our personal values, reflect on what kind of leadership is needed to navigate today’s cultural landscape with integrity, courage and care. Thanks to the group’s diversity, we were constantly reminded that our values, thoughts and actions all depend on our education, culture and context.
The night in the desert
Deserts hold a special kind of magic from their unique character: vast, timeless and humbling. Immersing oneself in such a landscape of infinite horizons can awaken new perspectives and open unexpected paths of connection. Wadi Rum, Jordan’s breathtaking desert, offered exactly this transformative experience. We’ve spent one night in one of Wadi Rum’s camp that became a living space for human connection - between participants and with the nature itself.
The desert gifted us all a rare energy: moments of giving and receiving, of silence and sharing. At sunset when the landscape shifts colours, at night under the countless stars, and at sunrise when the desert slowly breathed into light: each moment carried its own kind of wonder.
The night in the desert was exceptional and some people from the group brought something personal to the circle around the warmth of a fire: a song, a poem, a story, a reading, or a dance. The night was enriched by the musical accompaniment of Fehedê Herbo on his traditional instrument, the Kurdish tambur, which provided plenty of moments of collective singing.
IDEA Festival, uniting the local and regional artistic scene
Thanks to IDEA Festival and Studio 8, this week was also a fantastic artistic experience filled with great discoveries. Organised by Hadi Nahleh and his brother Anas Nahleh, IDEA Festival brought more than only dance. Most of the performances included amazing dancers, sound artists and visual artists, blending electronic music and digital arts into the dance works we got to see. “Mycelium: Weaving Invisible Threads of Artistic Collaboration” is a perfect illustration of this interdisciplinarity. It included 3 showcases created in residency by artists from across the Arab region. I was also impressed by “Ritual - Vestige”, choreographed by Hadi Nahleh, “Daydreaming” by Anas Nahleh & Arran Walshe, and the moving performance “On this land” by Misan Miso Samara from Palestine.
The celebration of the arts continued into the night, with sound artists bringing their music and their universe to Amman's clubs and party places, adding to the city's already rich nightlife.
I didn't expect to discover such beautiful, inspiring and futuristic pieces and artists. I really hope to see these amazing people back in Brussels and wish to see their work spread around the world.
Dreaming the future
Most importantly, the Atelier was an invitation to dream and build a new future together. The exercise in which we had to imagine a new collaborative project and pitch it to the group for feedback showed strong potential to grow into concrete initiatives.
There are big shifts in priorities now in Jordan, across the region, and around the world. The presence of participants from so many different countries was a real added value to address the question of how to change the world in a better way, taking into account various perspectives and contexts. We live in a globalised world and the answer to the problems we are facing today must be shaped collectively. We need to pause, step back from our individual projects, and create shared visions, contesting the rules we do not wish to follow, and making space for hope and imagination as essential tools for shaping another future.
At the same time, we cannot ignore the urgency of our times: the genocide in Palestine, the wars in Yemen, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in so many other places, the increased polarised society, the global warming and climate change, etc. As citizens of the world, we cannot accept this reality. Silence is a crime too so the first step is to name these disasters, to speak about them, and to consider what we can do, collectively, to support peace. As Alia Alzougbi reminded us: “We have to search for each other. We have a duty to see what else is possible together. Festivals are the engineers of imagination.” Hopefully, this Atelier will help us sow the seeds of solutions to unfold the arts and their transformative power. I am so grateful to have been part of this amazing group of creative and generous people and would like to commit to see how we can keep our connection and build together.
by Audrey Brisack