Attending the Arts Festivals Summit 2025 in Edinburgh: Fear, belonging, and the will to continue
Alumni of The Festival Academy play a vital role in EFA’s vibrant festivals community. In this piece, Abduljabbar Alsuhili, from Yemen and based in Sweden, comes back on the reasons that brought him to the Arts Festivals Summit 2025 in Edinburgh and his experience.
I didn't go to Edinburgh out of curiosity.
I went because I was afraid. Afraid of the future. Afraid that financial instability would eventually do what political violence never could – force me to abandon the cultural work I came to Europe to build. As a Yemeni artist living in Sweden, working somewhere between radio journalism, theatre, and cultural organising, I packed my bags for Scotland carrying more anxiety than luggage.
Migration changes you in ways that geography never could. Leaving Yemen and starting over in Sweden meant learning a new language, learning when to push and when to hold back, and constantly negotiating which parts of yourself to translate and which to protect. In the middle of all that, I've been trying to build something: a festival that would give Arab art and Arab artists in Sweden a real home – not a corner, not an exotic addition to someone else's programme, but a genuine space of dialogue between Arab communities in exile and Swedish audiences. That's not an abstract project for me. It's a form of persistence. An argument, made in public, that our stories belong here.
I chose to attend the Arts Festivals Summit 2025 because I needed to place myself inside a bigger conversation. More than 200 festival leaders, cultural managers, policymakers, and partners gathered in Edinburgh for four days of discussion about the role of festivals in society, about funding, collaboration, and the future of festival-making. For me, that wasn't a luxury. It was a necessity. I needed to hear how others were surviving uncertainty – how they thought about artistic freedom and sustainability – and, honestly, whether there was still room for someone like me: a young migrant cultural worker, largely self-funded, trying to build something in a climate that isn't always welcoming.
My reasons for going were not purely artistic. They were political and deeply personal. I've watched the rise of right-wing rhetoric across Europe with growing concern. What I thought I had left behind in Yemen, I found waiting for me in Sweden in a different form: suspicion toward Arab cultural work, hostility toward the Arabic language, an impulse to frame Arab arts as a threat rather than a contribution. That fear is real. It shapes how you speak, how you plan, what you dare to imagine. It also makes cultural work feel more urgent than ever.
A festival is never just a festival. It is a commitment, a long-term act of construction under pressure.
What I found in Edinburgh was not a single answer. It was something more necessary: recognition. In sessions about artistic freedom, I recognised the quieter censorship that artists carry without naming it – self-censorship, the kind that grows when you are constantly translating yourself across political and cultural lines. In discussions about funding and leadership during crisis, I saw my own situation reflected back at me. A festival is never just a festival. It is a commitment, a long-term act of construction under pressure.
The most important moment came during EFA Talks and Listens. I spoke openly – about uncertainty, about financial barriers, about the pressure to give up artistic work for more "practical" jobs, about the emotional weight of carrying all of this as a migrant. What surprised me wasn't that I spoke. It was the response. People listened. They understood. Some recognised the same tensions in their own work. In that moment, I did not feel like a guest who had slipped into the wrong room. I felt like someone whose concerns had earned their place there.
There were moments of isolation too – sitting among international directors and established institutions, feeling the distance. But then I unexpectedly ran into alumni from the Festival Academy, and something shifted. They were surprised I had come on my own and financed the journey myself. I was surprised to discover I belonged to a wider network I hadn't fully known how to reach. More than anything, I felt an immediate kinship with people who understand what it means to carry more questions than answers and keep building anyway.
I didn't leave Edinburgh with a finished concept for my festival. What I left with was equally important: relationships, encouragement, and the outline of future possibilities. Several festival directors spoke to me about potential collaborations, exchanges, and inviting Yemeni artists into their programmes. That mattered. One of my deepest goals has always been to make space for Yemeni artists to be seen not as exceptions or curiosities, but as essential voices in contemporary cultural life. The summit helped me make that argument louder.
Migrant artists are not guests in the cultural landscape. We are contributors, builders, and partners.
My fear did not disappear on the flight home. But it became more manageable. I returned to Sweden with more energy than I had arrived with, and with a clearer sense that I am not carrying this alone.
Migrant artists are not guests in the cultural landscape. We are contributors, builders, and partners. We are not asking for charity. We are asking for collaboration, trust, and the chance to shape what comes next.
That is the future I want to work for: one where Arab artists in Europe are treated as essential cultural partners, not as outsiders to be tolerated; where festivals become spaces of genuine exchange; and where fear – which never fully goes away – stops being the thing that silences us and starts being the thing that clarifies exactly why this work matters.
by Abduljabbar Alsuhili