Who are we?

afikra is a grassroots movement that evolved into a global media and educational platform focused on the history and culture of the Arab world. Essentially, we are "TED focused on the Arab world". What makes afikra special is that our work is designed to cultivate curiosity in our community - encouraging our members to proactively question the dominant narratives about the region's history and culture.  

We believe curious people make better citizens and curious communities make better societies. Our vision is to build a global community of curious minds to promote intellectualism and deepen our communal knowledge of the Arab world's history and culture. 

What are the things afikra does?

LIVE EVENTS

Conversation series

Our long-form interview series, hosted on Zoom, features academics and arts and media experts who are helping document and/or shape the history and culture of the Arab world through their work. Our hope is that by having the guest share their expertise and story, the community still walks away with new found curiosity - and maybe some good recommendations about new nerdy rabbit holes to dive into head first.

Community Presentations (Feature & FWDs)

Every Saturday a community member delivers an in-depth presentation on a ‎topic related to the Arab world’s history and culture during a one-hour online event. The presentation is the ‎culmination of a month-long afikra coaching process to help identify a topic, find research and develop the ‎presentation. The goal is to showcase the presenter’s curiosity, research and share some knowledge.
Once a month we hold an afikra Mezze event featuring four afikra FWDs, short 5-10 presentations sharing an ‎interesting article, video, book, podcast or another finding with the audience.

All the events are followed by a moderated town-hall style Q&A with questions from the live virtual audience on Zoom.

MEDIA

The afikra Podcast & youtube series

The afikra Podcast features conversations and community presentations about the history and culture of the Arab world. afikra is a global educational and content platform aimed at promoting intellectual curiosity and understanding about the history & culture of the Arab world. Most episodes are recorded over zoom during our live events.

Daftar

The afikra blog diversifies the conversations happening through afikra’s platforms into an online-published format. It features short or long-form articles and posts that supplement, amplify or spring from a topic explored on Afikra.  

Storytime

Every week, a member from the afikra community takes over our Instagram Stories for an enlightening Storytime to share what they have been reading, researching, working on, or possible presentation ideas. The takeover takes place every Sunday and Monday of the week to celebrate the nerdiness of our community and spread curiosity. 

Q&A Series

We are inviting young visual artists who are from/live in the Arab world to create an original piece of art that is inspired by one the topics from our afikra library (afikra.com/archive). This collection will be published through the afikra social media channels, and a selection of them will be available to purchase as prints through our afikra.com/store . Any proceeds of the printing will help keep afikra’s events, workshops, library, and media free and open to all. The intention of this project is to make art that “begs the question” and gets people curious enough to do a little research themselves. The artworks do not reveal the entirety of the topic, but rather leave some mystery and space for the viewer to investigate further. 

EDUCATION

Presenter Workshops

afikra is all about asking questions and exploring something new. Every two weeks we host a free workshop that helps folks prepare a new afikra presentation.

Research Collective

A four months program offering community experience, the chance to think, learn, and collaborate with a research cohort/collective of your peers who will push and inspire you; and coaching and skills, training workshops and individualized support aimed at honing your research skills and developing new ways of engaging with ideas and materials, and an intellectual product editing/translation/multimedia support to help you produce something great that you are proud of and to help you find the platform to publish and promote your work.