The event will be moderated by Alfonso Carlos Bolado, director of the Contemporary Islam Library, Edicions Bellaterra.

The youths who were born from 1982 through 2004, referred to as millennials, will become more than 70% of the developed world’s labor force in 2025. Not all groups of adolescents and youths in their twenties create historical movements focusing on their identity as young people, but it appears as though Arab millennials have. Six years ago, an urban youth movement broke onto the scene, given momentum by social and economic malaise, for the discovery of new life experiences, in confrontation with a series of regimes whose only interest lay in perpetuating their own power. But how did they do this? Juan Cole will take a look at the cases of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. At the time, people spoke of a contagious effect spreading out from Tahrir Square to Spain’s May 15th movement. Can the Arab experience be compared with that of youths in Spain? Nessrin el Hachlaf will delve further into the matter, examining the case of the migrant population residing in Spain and their descendants.

Juan Cole is a public intellectual, a prominent blogger and an essayist, as well as a history professor at the University of Michigan. His most recent work is Los nuevos árabes, juventud y activismo político (2010-2014) (The New Arabs: Youth and activism, 2010-2014, Bellaterra, 2015). He has also written a great deal about Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Southern Asia. He frequently works as an analyst in the US media about current affairs in the Arab and Islamic world. @jricole

Nessrin el Hachlaf has a degree in Law and Journalism and has been a practising lawyer with her own law firm since 2010. She takes part in the Justice Observatory of association Aula
de Marruecos en España, which forms part of the Euro-Mediterranean Observatory of the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid and the Platform of Professionals and Intellectuals of Moroccan Origin Residing Abroad.

At the conference, they will explain the importance and effects that the war in Syria has had on Europe, where policies towards refugees have complicated understanding of the conflict, unleashing unfounded fears.

Maysun Cheikh Ali (Madrid, 1976) studied Fine Arts in Madrid, completed a year of study at the Athens Fine Arts University and did her Master’s degree in Sociocultural Analysis of Communication and Knowledge at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Since 1994, she has taken part in exhibitions and art displays, as well as several competitions and festivals.

Her animation, “Mon Amour Historias de Muros” won first prize at the Lúmen_Ex Awards given by the University of Extremadura (2010), third prize for animation by the Municipal Government of Cadiz (2011) and the jury prize given by Getxo University (2011). @mayssam_cheikh
Blog by Maysun Cheikh Ali   

Hana Jalloul Muro earned a PhD at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in the International Relations and International Public Law Department.  She has been a Junior Expert on two European Commission projects in Lebanon for over three years. At present, she is an associate professor of Political Theory and Ideologies at the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid and a professor of Comparative Politics at the Universidad Internacional de Valencia.

We will hear popular songs from the Arab world on the topics of love, exile and the beauty of a paradise lost; both cheerful and sad poems, sung from a distance, but always sweet, to face the harsh reality of our times: mankind’s solitude before an ever more fragmented world.

Aya El Dika
A Lebanese singer and performer who resides in Madrid. At the same time as her studies in foreign languages, she learned about modal music and singing during her stays in Spain, France, Tunisia and Turkey. Though she has worked on styles such as jazz and blues, her greatest musical influences continue to lie in the musical traditions of the Middle East. Her repertoire encompasses classical Arab music (Muwaxaha, a type of folk song) and traditional forms of Mediterranean music and sacred music from the Arab world. She has collaborated on different projects and with various world music groups (Bab Sharqi) and is currently working with artists like Eduardo Paniagua and Cristiane Azem in Spain.

Hames Bitar
Bitar is a Syrian musician who harks from a family with much musical tradition in its background. His grandfather was a highly acknowledged Arabic oud player, and his father was the first music professor in the region. He studied the Arabic oud and Spanish guitar at the Spanish Guitar Institute in Damascus. In Spain, he has formed part of many music groups which perform classical Arab music (Al-Baraka, Abdelkarim ensamble) and also founded groups dedicated to Arab music and jazz fusions (Nahawand and Taqsim). He directed the album Las puertas del Oriente, which recovers Eastern music from Al-Andalus. He has collaborated with the mythical group Radio Tarifa and the jazz group J.J. Band. Since the year of 2010, he has been the musical director of the dance company Luna de Oriente and a member of groups which create fusions of Arab music and other types of music, including Darawish (a fusion between Turkish music and flamenco).

Kaveh Savarian
A musician and composer, Savarian has a Master’s degree in Composition from the University of Tehran. He has been in many concerts with different music groups, both inside of Iran and in other countries. He was a member of the Tehran Symphony Orchestra (concert flute), Rastak Ensemble (traditional woodwind instruments), and Grupo de Naima jazz fusion (flute, ney, tombak). He has quite a large history of recordings, the most notable of which are Parisan (quartet for ney), Persian Rug (duet on flute and piano) and Avareh (jazz fusion music). He has won different awards as the Best Composer at the International Fadjr Festival and Best Soundtrack at Iran’s National Media Festival.

At the workshop, you will enjoy creating rhythms all on your own, but with the energy created while playing in a group. The idea is to make music and share it.

All percussion instruments are welcome (djembé, darbouka, conga, bongos, cajón…). Come with yours, and if you don’t have one, we will lend it to you!

Samir Elturky
A young percussionist from Egypt born in Cairo, Elturky has a degree in Social Sciences and Psychology from the University of Cairo. His musical specialization is in percussion instruments like the darbuka, tabla, duff, bendir and riq. He is an expert in traditional Egyptian rhythms and Arab music.

Ibnou Goush defines his work with this quote taken from the book “Leo Africanus” by Amin Maalouf: “From my mouth you will hear Arabic, Turkish, Castilian, Berber, Hebrew, Latin and vulgar Italian, because all tongues and all prayers belong to me. But I belong to none of them. I belong only to God and to the earth, and it is to them that I will one day soon return...”.

Ibrahim Ibnou Goush
The son of Moroccan Berber immigrants,  he has a Diploma in Stage Arts from La Cuarta Pared (Madrid) and in Eastern Flamenco Dance.

Official opening of the exhibition in which artists Bilal Dadou, Dar Al Naim, Basem Pablo and Kinda Youssef are participating, with works that bring up topics like the drama of Syrian refugees, the irrationality of borders, the nostalgia of exile and the claiming of their multifaceted identities. During the opening event, we will also be holding a gathering with all of the participants in “Arabisms: Festival of Young Creators” and the designer of the festival’s image, illustrator Nader Sharaf.

Bilal Dadou (Tetouan, 1986)
Dadou has one degree in Fine Arts from the University of Granada (2015) and another in Education Sciences from the University of Malaga (2009). His work revolves around seeking links which combine the benefits of being able to reproduce graphic works and their reiterative impact on art therapy processes. Having worked in the fields of etching and lithographs since 2013, he has received specific training in Granada, Seville and Milan, having cooperated on related publications. His work has been exhibited both inside and outside of the country. He is currently taking part in a traveling exhibition of etchings, in which other artists have participated from Portugal, France, Poland and New Zealand.
www.bilaldadou.com

Basem Pablo (Paris, 1972)
Basem Pablo grew up between Paris, Moscow, Damascus and Madrid. He learned and then forgot languages repeatedly. In 2000, he began to make documentaries. Seven years later, he started to make drawings. He has lived in Granada, Lisbon and Seville. Currently he is living in Cologne, Germany. In 2017, his daughter May Nico was born. His drawings have been displayed at various solo exhibitions, the most notable of which were one in Lisbon, Portugal (2012) and another in Holzburg, Germany (2014).
http://basempablo.wordpress.com/

Dar Al Naim (Madrid, 1988)
Dar Al Naim is a visual artist who has been living in Ibiza for one year. In his work, we can constantly find topics related with Sudan, his father’s country, where he lived a large portion of his life. His eclectic education has allowed him to create a fusion of the European academic perspective and an African sense of aesthetics, with a very important presence of lively colors, prints and African shapes. Behind Dar’s work lies a very international message that speaks to us about peace and unit, while also reflecting on his own existence as a citizen of the world. @talatawtalateen
http://www.daralnaimart.com/

Kinda Youssef (Latakia, 1984)
Kinda Youssef is a Syrian artist and researcher who has lived and worked in Madrid since 2011. She has a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of Damascus and an Official Master’s degree in Research on Art and Creation from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2011-13). She is currently completing her PhD at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM). She has taken part in several group exhibitions. Her artistic practice is based on art research methods, and her field of work involves studies on the image. She uses many different methods to create her works.

During this activity, food anthropology and audiovisuals are put together with cooking in order to research what is cooked and the stories that get “stirred up” between Madrid and Beirut.

A proposal to set the table to the Mediterranean in order to listen, see and try tastes that resound among the people who cross each others paths and inhabit this region, highlighting the diversity of their identities and culinary memories.

Participants are invited to bring in an ingredient to contribute its taste and memory to the dishes cooked during the workshop.

Cooking Madrid-Cooking Beirut: Poetics of Taste is a cultural culinary project that seeks to place value on life and the histories of markets and neighborhoods, as well as getting to know the different meanings of food, cooking and eating.

Suraia Abud
Abud is a chef and culinary artist who specializes in culinary studies on foods. She has worked on projects related with food education and culture, urban gardens and inter-generational activities. Her traveling cuisine proposal drinks from her personal experiences related with people’s culinary knowledge. This creates special dynamics in public spaces and makes it possible for sharing knowledge related with the imaginary of food.

Susana Moliner
Moliner is a curator and cultural producer. Behind her she has twelve years of experience in cultural production and mediation, and in recent years she has devoted her efforts to implementing free culture programs in Africa. She has coordinated various projects: Africa Light, Festival Pixelini, Afropixel, Côte à Côte and Wekalet Nehna. At present, she is coordinating the “Experimenta Distrito” program by Medialab Prado and the Municipal Government of Madrid in the district of Fuencarral-El Pardo, as well as the “Grigri Pixel” innovation laboratory, with the cooperation of African makers.

The participants will share with the public how classical and contemporary poetry is present in their lives and speak to us about the poems by Spanish and Arab authors who have accompanied them in recent years.

This play reflects upon some of the conflicts which arise in the construction of contemporary aesthetics in the Maghreb region: the concept of God, the West’s cultural hegemony, sexuality, etc.

Ahmed Benattia (Granada, 1991)
Benattia knows a bit of everything but understands nothing. Guided by a profound interest in life, he has undertaken studies in Chemical Engineering, Arabic Philology and Political Science. He has worked as a receptionist, a tour guide in the medina of Tangiers, an actor, businessman, traveler, handiman, waiter, broker and has even traded with industrial quantities of phosphates between Morocco and Libya. Most notable among his works in the field of stage arts are the creation and direction of “Sustaining What Falls” (a Spanish-Moroccan platform to recover the Cervantes Theater in Tangiers), his performative works as a creator (des.conectados, N-340 in Tarifa in 2012; Aïsha Kandisha in Granada in 2014; Desert in Granada, as well, in February 2016; Suhuf with Sara Molina presented in Madrid and Galicia in 2016. He currently lives between Madrid and Granada.

Carlos Alcántara (Cádiz, 1989)
Alcántara lives in Chiclana de la Frontera. For three years, he studied Nutrition as a major at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, but he gave this up in the end. One hundred eighty degrees later, he ended up in Granada, where he graduated from the University of Granada in Modern Languages and Literatures, specializing in Mandarin Chinese and Hebrew. He forms part of the krautrock-pop band Holögrama, with which he has played all over the country, traveling to the most important festivals and concert halls, and having published two albums, as well as collaborating on compilation albums like Merry Jäger Christmas, 2016, in addition to others. More than 50 concerts, winners of the Desencaja competition organized by the Andalusian Youth Institute in 2015 during the Monkey Week festival, and semi-finalists in the City of Bilbao competition. In the field of literature, he premiered with his “Poemario Google” through the independent publishing firm Alphalpha in 2016, a book of poems created on the basis of Google search results, which place his poetics somewhere between appropriationism and humor, and make him an observer more than a writer. At present, he is completing his Master’s degree in teaching the Chinese language at UGR, he is completing his solo Spanish-language pop music project, with which he has gone to play in Viechtach (Germany), as part of the series Ancient Evenings {} And The Power Of Gods, called NADIE CANTA (“Nobody Sings”). He has an album which is about to come out in which he explores and plays with the sounds of background music, and another book of poems.

Nadia El Kastawi (Almería, 1988). Half Spanish and half Egyptian, El Kastawi was born and grew up in Andalusia. She studied Fine Arts at the University of Almería. She is currently completing her studies in dramatic arts at the William Layton Laboratory.