Projects

Creative Roots was held in 2025 in collaboration with TARII and generously supported by the JM Kaplan Foundation, and aimed to support community engagement with Iraq's diverse past. Through workshops that were designed to engage audiences in new and meaningful ways, we saw hundreds of participants learn to play The Game of Ur, create their own cylinder seals, design Abbasid tiles, as well as explore Baghdad's urban architecture and its relation to the past. Check out our blog for more details!

Our core creative writing activity invites emerging writers to explore their skills and take a deeper dive into creative writing as an expression of freedom, thought, and fun. Through group sessions, young Iraqi writers explore specific writers and discuss the deeper messages within their text, whilst also examine perspectives that are often ignored or under-represented in Iraqi literature.

Short writing exercises, and presentations enable those participants to explore their work, style, and messages within a safe and inclusive environment. Through our wider network, we aim to connect writers with future opportunities for them to raise their voice louder, strengthening emerging Iraqi narratives that challenge people to what they know.

Iraq is full of creative stories that just don't get enough attention. Our team love meeting up and coming artists, game designers, film-makers and much more! Through these spotlights we aim to highlight what challenges exist, how youth are navigating them, and build bridges and opportunities for them.

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You can head over to our blog to find out some of their awesome stories that will challenge what you know about Iraq.

Azzima Faniya is an interactive exploration between creativity and its relationship to struggles that promotes intergenerational engagement and social cohesion. Through focusing on leading Iraqi artists, participants explore creative journeys and how challenges around them have influenced their work. 

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The activities promote discussion and shared experiences before creative workshops that relate to the artist being discussed. These sessions aim to promote knowledge sharing, empathy, and creativity in a purely Iraqi context. Accessible to all, there are no requirements to have an artistic background.

Our core research theme between 2026 and 2028 is centred upon the role of cultural heritage entrepreneurship and how it can play a key part in social cohesion and contribute to sustainable development and livelihood generation.  This is an ongoing study centred upon Babylon as a case study with considerations from Baghdad and Mosul.