Launch celebration at the Unity Theatre in July 2025. Images courtesy of Andrew AB Photography

Full of humour and beauty, Hamzeh’s extraordinary story transported us to his village in Syria, Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, Gateshead and inside his mind: a place full of music, dancing, fantasies and marbles. Hamzeh invited us to be his childhood friends, to hold the moon to light the way into his dreams, brushing the dust from his clothes and taking to the stage. Images courtesy Andrew Ab Photography.

Guests at Yamama Café & Bar were invited to experience traditional Jordanian dishes, crafted from Futoon & Noura’s family’s own recipes – with each plate telling a story of heritage and home. Images courtesy Andrew Ab Photography.

In this free exhibition and artist talk at Yamama, Mohamed Gohar utilised his artistic visual language alongside architectural and heritage experiences. He examined the dynamics of present-day Alexandrian society and their influence on the evolution of the city’s urban and built environment. Image courtesy Andrew AB Photography.

A celebration of storytelling, writing, and music from the capital of Yemen, in association with Comma Press. The latest instalment in Comma’s ‘Reading the City’ series is ‘filled with hopes and dreams, with flickers of magic and scathing satire’. We celebrated the writers Sana’a is producing and the art and challenges of translating them.There was food and poetry readings, including award winning poet Hamdan Dammag, andreadings from the Book of Sana’ahaired by Comma’s Ra Page. Images courtesy of Alan Blundell.

We were thrilled to present Archiving Nostalgia, a film screening featuring two short films and a feature length documentary at FACT Liverpool. The event showcased contemporary Arab films from Lebanon, Tunisia, and Algeria that reflect on nostalgia as both a thematic and aesthetic tool, all creating powerful archives of personal and collective memory. The screening was followed by an in-person panel discussion on Arab cinema archiving.

The evening featured:

He Looked At Me | 2023 | 10 mins | Dir. Evelyne Hlais (Lebanon)

Memory of A Wedding | 2025 | 4 mins | Dir. Taqwa Bint Ali x NOWNESS (Tunisia)

Janitou | 2020 | 82 mins | Amine Hattou (Algeria, Germany, Qatar)

Images courtesy of David McTague.

A Grain of Sand حبة رمل By Elias Matar. Commissioned by London Palestine Film Festival and supported by Liverpool Arab Arts Festival. Adapted from A Million Kites: Testimonies and Poems from the Children of Gaza by Leila Boukarim and Asaf Luzon Renad, a young Gazan girl, embarks on a dangerous journey. Carrying only the echoes of her grandmother’s tales and the spark of her own imagination, she searches for her family and the ‘Anqaa’ – the mythical Palestinian Phoenix. A Grain of Sand is a one-woman show that takes an intimate look at war through the eyes of a child, blending Palestinian folklore with real-life testimonies from children in contemporary Gaza. Renad’s story is one of resilience, hope and the right of children to be children. Images courtesy of Alan Blundell.

A screening and conversation with poet and filmmaker Ali Al-Jamri on his first film, described as a poetic ghost story. The Legend of the Looms is Ali Al-Jamri’s first film: a poetic ghost story.When a visitor to a historic weaver’s house in Rossendale accidentally summons an irate Lancashire weaver’s ghost, his own ancestor, an Arab weaver from Bahrain, materialises to defend him.

Ali Al-Jamri is one of Manchester’s inaugural Multilingual City Poets (2022-2025). The film is commissioned by the Arab British Centre and funded by Arts Council England and the Freelands Foundation. It was first exhibited at Blackburn Art Gallery with the British Textile Biennial. Joining Ali Al-Jamri in the conversation were Anahid Kasabian (Host) and Ricardo Vilela (Co-Director and Producer). Images courtesy of Alan Blundell.

We welcomed a screening of Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo and Dounia – The Great White North, two wonderful stories of Dounia, a young Syrian child, to the fantastic Plaza Community Cinema, in association with At the Library!

Through sculpture, photo-collage, drawing, and textiles, Nour Bishouty investigated the impulses of tourism and sightseeing, foregrounding questions around permission and the production of fantasy.

Images courtesy Andrew Ab Photography.

In Limbs of the Lunar Disc: Isthmus Ancient River by Sarah Al-Sarraj, the artist explored alternative temporalities engaging with ancestry, ecology and the long term impacts of environmental violence.

Images courtesy Andrew Ab Photography.

Family Day at Sefton Park Palm House.  Image courtesy Andrew AB Photography