AFAC Creative Caravans Grants

• Eligibility Criteria: Digital media organisations, fesitivals, touring groups, and residencies from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, and Tunisia.
• Type of Funding: Grant
• Region: Middle East and North Africa
• Application Language: English

The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) is offering grants under its Creative Caravans pillar for projects (from festivals and exhibitions to residencies) and media works (audio, visual, or written) that address global and local challenges through arts and culture.

The grants are a part of AFAC’s Ecologies of Culture, a new, four-year program co-funded by the European Union and in partnership with Oxfam, Megaphone, and Echos Electrik, which invites applicants from inside and outside artistic practice. The program is aimed at finding ways to address the many challenges we face, from gender inequality and climate change to digital transformation and beyond, not as isolated issues but as an “ecology” of interconnected, reinforcing dynamics that produce the worlds we inhabit.

Thematics

This is the core of the Creative Caravans pillar: how to ensure that ideas, projects, films, and solutions travel in a world where border restrictions, censorship, and atomization limit connection? The pillar has two sub-pillars focused on dissemination:

1. The first supports the architecture and people that enable ideas to travel. This includes festivals and exhibitions to residencies that regionally circulate, tour, and disseminate artistic and cultural works. Whether digital or physical, intimate or public, what matters is a project’s ability to move across borders.
2. The second focuses on media and how we address global and local challenges through arts and culture writing and multimedia production. At its core is storytelling: making sense of the world, connecting lives, and imagining alternatives.  Media practitioners determine not only how to tell a story, but what a story is. Media platforms shape how meaning moves. They create the conditions for engagement and, at their best, open space for marginalized knowledge and perspectives.

Eligibility 

Two types of entities are eligible for funding:

• Festivals, exhibitions, residencies or touring cultural events: Only established organizations who have organized at least two events in one of the nine countries are eligible to apply. Up to 12 projects will receive funding of up to €65,000 each.
• Digital Media Platforms: Independent digital media platforms that have been operating for at least two years. These organisations provide content related either to one of the nine eligible countries. Additionall, they engage with regional or global issues from a cultural perspective. Up to 7 emerging platforms will get funding of up to €15,000 each. Up to 7 established platforms will be awarded funds of up to €25,000 each.

Projects must be completed within a maximum of 24 months from the date of signing the grant agreement. Any request for an extension beyond this period will not be granted.

How to apply 

Applications are only accepted through this online form. Applications submitted via regular mail or e-mail will not be accepted.

The deadline to submit your Creative Caravans application is 31 March 2026 at 5:00 PM +3 GMT (Beirut time). Please submit your application 24 hours before the deadline so AFAC can help you in case of any technical difficulties.

For more information, please visit this page.