Connections

The Cedar Tree Project is one facet within a multi-layered global web of connections to SWANA artists, alliances, organizations, advocates, hubs and more:

• Amalgam Studio Beirut 
  Amalgam Studio is at the heart of Beirut’s dance and performing arts scene, supporting artistic creation, experimental research and innovative work in movement, contemporary dance, and physical theatre.
• Arab.AMP 
  ​Arab.AMP is a platform for experimental live art and music by artists of the SWANA diaspora and allied communities. Arab.AMP is curated and directed by Leyya Mona Tawil who has worked in the field of performance and music for over 23 years. 
• The Arab American National Museum
  The Arab American National Museum (AANM) is the first and only museum in the United States devoted to Arab American history and culture. 
• Arab Film & Media Institute
  We founded the Arab Film and Media Institute to fight all the bigotry and hate with powerful art and storytelling that fosters empathy and understanding of our common humanity, and to support Arab talent in the United States.
• Body Watani
  Body Watani Dance project is a space to research movement, investigate artistic practice, and create performances from an embodied relation with ‘watan’ or homeland inside our bodies. Our work is held by two Palestinian sisters, Leila and Noelle Awadallah; daughters of a Palestinian refugee lineage, born on stolen land on Turtle Island.
• Yara Boustany
  Yara Boustany is a multidisciplinary artist, performer, choreographer and visual artist born in Ghbeleh, Lebanon. She is the founder and artistic director of Amalgam Studio Beirut.
• International Dance Day Festival in Lebanon
  ​The festival, directed by Lebanese American University Dance Professor Nadra Assaf, coincides with UNESCO's International Dance Day, which is annually celebrated around the world on April 29. International Dance Day celebrates dance in all of its forms, in hopes that it is harnessed as a positive force to bring people together through the universal language of dance. ​
• Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies
  ​The Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies was established as a research and outreach center for the production and dissemination of knowledge about Lebanese immigration to the United States and around the world. 
• Maqamat
  Maqamat is a dance company that was established in Beirut in 2002 and moved to Lyon in 2020 in the perspective of developing its creative and cultural projects in France and internationally. It played a major role in the organization, creation and establishment of a contemporary dance scene in Lebanon and the region.
• MENA Theater Makers Alliance
  MENA Theater Makers Alliance amplifies the voices of Middle Eastern and North African theater makers and expands how stories from and about our communities are told on U.S. stages.
• Meryl Murman
  Meryl Murman is a choreographer, filmmaker and multi-disciplinary arts programmer.
• Mizna 
  ​Mizna is a critical Minnesota based platform for contemporary literature, art, film, and cultural programming centering the work of Southwest Asian and North African artists. 
• National Arab Heritage Month
  Arab America and the Arab America Foundation launched the National Arab American Heritage Month initiative in 2017.
• New Arab American Theater Works
  New Arab American Theater Works is a Minnesota-based theater organization which develops and amplifies artistic work by Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) and Arab American artists. 
• RAWI: Radius of Arab American Writers
  Established in 1993, RAWI is a national organization that provides mentoring, community, and support for Arab-American writers and those with roots in the Arabic speaking world and diaspora.
• River Rose Re-membrance 
  ​Our work is dedicated to re-membering, reclaiming, and restoring the original, baladi (local/land-based/indigenous**) ancestral wisdoms and paradigms of practice across our respective communities. This vision is initiated & run by Layla Kristy Feghali, MSW, Plantcestral + Ancestral re-Membrance practitioner, community educator, and story re-collector (writer + archivist).
• Andrea Shaker
  Shaker’s creative work is interdisciplinary, spanning photography, moving image, experimental film, and written and spoken word. As an Arab American, she explores the spaces in-between home, homeland and migration. 
• SWANA hub
  This HUB is our space to share & cross-pollinate pieces of our SWANA re-membrance with you, across our diasporas and homelands and beyond. 
• Tiro Arts Festival in Lebanon
  ​NGO in South Lebanon based on volunteering, aims to create free and independent cultural spaces in Lebanon and is carrying out various cultural activities, including International theater, film and musical festivals, theater workshops, film shows and exhibitions. 
• Mette Loulou von Kohl
  Mette Loulou weaves movement, words, and objects into the exploration of her embodied histories. She exists in two places at once.

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