Residency in Saida

Switch Perspective is inviting previous workshop participants (and, in case of availability, new participants) to take part in a seven-day storytelling residency in Saida. This would be the second residency Switch Perspective organises, after the  residency in Mina we did in 2021.

The main part of the residency will be devoted to producing audio stories on the topic of migration, all set in the city of Saida and its surroundings. There will also be sessions on topics Switch Perspective usually works on (reflections on personal experiences, critical thinking about media and storytelling, anti-racism, etc.)

All participants will to produce a story that portrays Saida through the lens of migration and exile during the residency. As always, we want to tell these stories in a way that is respectful, thoughtful, self-reflective and collaborative in terms of our interactions with people who figure in the stories.

The project will end with two live storytelling events: the first one on June 24, which is the last day of the workshop, and the second one on July 8, two weeks after the end of the workshop (both events will take place on a Saturday). For these events, people will be invited to join us on a walk through Saida, with stops where each story is told to the audience. 

Finally, as we did with the story walk in Mina, all stories will be recorded and put together in a self-guided audio tour to be published online. People can download and listen to it any time, while walking through Saida.  

During the workshop, we will stay together in the city. There will be a space for people to work on their stories and for our collective sessions. The team will be there during the entire residency to give any feedback and input needed. As always with Switch Perspective workshops, we value the time spent together as a group and see these workshops as collaborative, meaning that we all take part in things like keeping the space nice, maintaining time and contributing to the program.

If you apply for the residency, we count on you being present during the full seven days and the storytelling event two weeks later. Additionally, all storytellers will be asked to record their stories with our audio guide producer. The residency is free of charge, including accommodation and food. Each participant producing an audio story will receive a small compensation when the story is finalised.

If you have experience in story writing/telling and are interested in this residency, we encourage you to apply by filling out this form by May 12, 2023. No previous experience of working with audio is required.  

The workshop language is Arabic.

Team

Ibrahim Nehme from The Outpost

Ibrahim Nehme is a creator and curator working on new media. His work is a cross-pollination between journalism, activism and artistic expression, and could be situated as a series of attempts to shift the collective consciousness. In 2012 he founded The Outpost magazine, which became a platform for writers and artists from the Arab world to channel a new voice of resistance and change, and received several awards.

Jenny Gustafsson from Switch Perspective

Jenny Gustafsson is a journalist/writer and editor who has lived in Lebanon and reported from the region since 2009. In 2010, she co-founded the online magazine Mashallah News. Her work has been published by The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Courrier international and others. She is one of the co-founders of Switch Perspective.

Rana Hassan from Switch Perspective

Rana Hassan is a facilitator specialised in community building and urban research. She’s currently focusing on group facilitation; she joined forces with other trainers and facilitators, co-founding Kabcoob, a cooperative that is dedicated to community facilitation from a feminist perspective with a focus on supporting cooperatives and horizontal groups, as well as movement building. She is a member of the Switch Perspective team.

Speakers and contributors

Amal Kaawash

Amal Kaawash is a community artist whose interests span songwriting, singing and creative writing. She founded Lafeef; Creative Writing Hub in Saida, a writing collective based on sharing and exploring personal narratives in relation to space. Amal’s interests include musical folklore, particularly from the Levantine region. She is also recognised for the cartoon character Meiroun, named after her family’s ancestral village in Palestine that was ethnically cleansed in 1948.

Majd Al Hamwi

Majd Al Hamwi is an audiovisual artist. He directed several short and feature films, his latest being “Songs of the Departed” in 2023. In 2015, he produced his first album “Ya Lateef”. He also composed soundtracks for a number of films, documentaries, animations, installations and live performances.