The thrilling programme for Shubbak Festival 2023 has been announced, celebrating their seventh edition of London’s largest Festival of contemporary Arab arts and cultures, with further events across the UK.
With a dynamic and multi-disciplinary programme, Shubbak Festival platforms narratives representing Arab, South West Asian, and North African cultures. This year’s Festival will see popular favourites, emerging artists, and highly anticipated UK debuts and world premieres, with over 80 events across both arts venues and the public realm.
A collaborative endeavour between creatives and communities, the Festival will also present commissions and residencies from Shubbak’s creative programme. Showcasing an ambitious and vibrant line-up of performance, visual art, comedy, dance, film, literature, and talks and workshops, Shubbak Festival will champion artists and their crafts as they confront the urgent environmental and social issues of today.
This year’s festival will kick off with the group exhibition Totalitarian Props at The Africa Centre, exploring the use of political props as modalities of control in Afro-Arab nations, before embarking on a weekend take-over at the National Theatre’s River Stage Festival.
An unmissable ceremony of international arts and culture for all ages and co-presented with Bagri Foundation, this free event will offer an abundance of family fun, live music and late night entertainment!
Shubbak Festival presents renowned Lebanese-American musician and activist Hamed Sinno for their first public performance since leading up the most prominent indie-rock band of the Arab world, Mashrou’ Leila. A key figure in representational politics, free speech, and sexual freedoms in the Middle East, Sinno is at the forefront of conversations addressing social and political discourse. Co-commissioned by Shubbak and the Barbican, Sinno’s intimate and honest piece Poems of Consumption explores the resonances between Amazon-era consumerism, mental illness, unrequited love, and environmental collapse in a captivating musical composition.
The full line-up, listings and ticket information can be found here
