Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC)

AFAC receives funding from major foundations such as such as the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundations, as well as a number of European governments. ³ It has raised over $47.6 million and awarded nearly $36 million in grants since its founding in 2007. ⁴

Background

Activist Basma El Husseiny, who previously founded the cultural NGO Culture Resource, collaborated with a group of activists in 2007 to found Arab Fund for Arts and Culture. ⁵ The intent of the fund was to provide grants for artistic and cultural projects in the Middle East which were not receiving any other support or funding at the time. ⁶ As early as 2005, Husseiny worked to secure funding for AFAC, requesting that international left-of-center philanthropist George Soros consider AFAC as a potential candidate for his Open Society Foundations funding. ⁷

In a 2012 panel for the prominent U.S. think tank Brookings Institution, Husseiny thanked the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (KCPA) for partnering with AFAC during the 2009 KCPA Arabesque Festival. ⁵ The Wall Street Journal described the Arabesque Festival as “one of the most ambitious Arab arts exhibitions in recent years,” as it featured “800 artists representing 22 Arab countries.” ⁸ Husseiny expressed that formerly, this kind of partnership was confined to governmental agencies, and expressed gratitude that a “nongovernmental, nonprofit organization” like AFAC was chosen for such a role. ⁵

AFAC has also used its artistic and cultural events to express support for causes such as the mass immigration of Muslims into European countries. The AFAC-led Berlin Beirut Creative Platform hosted a 2017 forum including musical performances, readings, panel discussions, and visual art presentations, all aimed at presenting the European immigration from an Arab migrant point of view. ⁹

Grants

Arab Fund for Arts and Culture features nine annual creative grants, including grants for visual arts, performing arts, and films. Each grant category has its own set of rules, but generally, they are primarily intended to alleviate costs directly relating to the completion of an artistic project. ¹⁰ AFAC awards around 200 grants per year, with a total of “1,737 projects supported” since its founding. ¹¹ Additionally, AFAC provides mentorship to artists and seeks to “expand and diversify” artistic funding through promoting “philanthropy for the arts.” ¹²

Projects funded by AFAC grants include a number of artistic endeavors, many of which promote a more politically liberal and/or culturally liberal mindset compared to Arab region norms:

• Ecocriticism and Prospects of Palestinian Creative Writing, a 2022 research writing grant winner, features poetry and fiction with a focus on environmentalism; ¹³
• A set of 2022 workshops entitled, “Stop…Enough,” focuses on Syrian women and girls who experience violence based on their gender; ¹⁴
• “Gaza the City of Amputees” is a 2022 photography documentary of Palestinian amputees who received their injuries during the Gaza war; ¹⁵
• “Just a Few Minutes” is a 2021 theatrical performance which emphasized the alleged future effects of climate change on Alexandria, Egypt. ¹⁶

Partnerships

Arab Fund for Arts and Culture has forged partnerships with major media companies such as streaming subscription company Netflix. In 2021, Netflix partnered with AFAC to support 240 film freelancers through the AFAC-Netflix Hardship Fund. Netflix offered a total of $480,000 in grants, which provided individual freelancers with $2,000 each. ¹⁷ In 2022, Netflix’s Fund for Creative Equity again partnered with AFAC to award $250,000 to five female filmmakers from Arab countries. ¹⁸

AFAC has also partnered with the Sundance Institute, which is widely touted as hosting America’s largest annual independent film festival. ^{19 20} The Sundance Institute supported AFAC 2015 grantee project Of Fathers and Sons, an Academy Award nominated documentary about the struggles of two sons growing up in a radical Muslim family. ^{21 22 23}

Tech giant Apple donated $50,000 to AFAC in 2021 and left its options open for an ongoing partnership. The same year, UNESCO Yemen created a partnership with AFAC to provide training programs for artistic and cultural endeavors. ²⁴

Leadership

Rima Mismar currently serves as AFAC’s executive director. She previously had a career as a film critic, with a brief stint in writing and producing for television. Mismar began working for AFAC in 2011 as film programs manager and was promoted to deputy director in 2015 before taking over as executive director in 2016. ²⁵

AFAC founder Basma El Husseiny currently serves as founder and executive director of AFAC parent organization Culture Resource. She previously worked for the Ford Foundation as a media, arts and culture program officer. Husseiny reportedly has experience in the arts and is involved in Arab feminist movements. ²⁶

Ghassan Salame currently is the founding chairman of AFAC’s board of trustees. Salame also serves as the dean of the Paris School of International Affairs and teaches international relations at both the Paris Institute of Political Studies and Columbia University in New York. In 2003, he served as a political advisor for the United Nations, and from 2003 through 2006, he acted as senior advisor to the Secretary General. He has written a number of essays on foreign policy, which have been published in journals such as the European Journal of International Affairs. ²⁷

Financials

As of 2020 AFAC held over $14.7 million in assets and reported just over $7.7 million in liabilities. ²⁸ The following year, its grant activities totaled over $4.6 million, with total financial allocations just above $6.2 million. ²⁹

AFAC receives funding from a variety of sources, including government agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. ^{30 31} Major foundations also donate to AFAC, such as the Ford Foundation, which gave $900,000 to AFAC in 2017 for general purposes, $200,000 towards the AFAC JustFilms program, and $1,620 for AFAC leaders to attend a Ford Foundation meeting. ³² The New York-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation donated $320,000 to AFAC in 2019 to use for research. ³³

AFAC’s most prominent donor, Open Society Foundations, has worked with the organization since Husseiny’s first funding meeting with Soros in 2005. Throughout AFAC’s history, at least three members of its board of trustees also served in Soros-affiliated organizations: Abbas Zuaiter as chief operating officer of Soros Fund Management LLC, and both Ghassan Salame and Suzanne Wettenschwiler have sat on the board of the Open Society Institute. ^{34 27} Open Society Foundations’ website claims that it is “one of the largest private funders” of the arts in the Middle East through its donations to AFAC and parent organization Culture Resource. ³⁵ Both the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundations partnered with AFAC to create its Solidarity Fund for Arts and Culture Structures in Lebanon. ³⁶