Culture and Youth Programme

Culture is a cross-cutting programme at Sharek Youth Forum, integrated across the Forum’s programmes and interventions rather than confined to a standalone field of work. Cultural dimensions are embedded within youth, education, community participation, empowerment, protection, media, and volunteerism programmes as a fundamental pathway for strengthening national identity, deepening awareness and belonging, and safeguarding Palestinian memory and narrative.

Through this integrated approach, Sharek incorporates culture, the arts, and heritage into its initiatives and activities across cities, villages, and refugee camps. The programme creates youth-led spaces for expression, creativity, and participation, while enabling young people to explore, document, revitalise, and reinterpret Palestinian cultural heritage through contemporary approaches. These include music, dabke, traditional dress, cuisine, oral history, historic architecture, cultural tours and trails, filmmaking, visual arts, and digital production.

The programme views culture as a source of resilience and social cohesion and as a means of safeguarding the Palestinian narrative and transmitting it across generations. It also harnesses technology and artificial intelligence to develop innovative tools for heritage preservation and cultural knowledge production, while highlighting the diversity of the Palestinian experience and the distinctive character of its cities, villages, and refugee camps. At its core, the programme empowers young people as active custodians and creators of Palestinian cultural identity.

Programme Objectives

The Culture and Youth Programme seeks to:

Strengthen Palestinian cultural and national identity among young people.

Deepen belonging to Palestine as a land, people, heritage, and civilisation.

Safeguard Palestinian memory, narrative, and cultural heritage.

Document tangible and intangible heritage and transmit it across generations.

Strengthen young people’s connection to the land, place, and history.

Expand opportunities for artistic expression, creativity, and cultural dialogue.

Support emerging artists and provide opportunities to create and exhibit their work.

Strengthen young people’s engagement with museums, theatres, cultural institutions, and creative spaces.

Revive traditions of volunteerism, mutual support, and community solidarity.

Revitalise agricultural seasons and celebrate their connection to Palestinian identity.

Promote cultural, rural, and digital tourism.

Equip young people to communicate the Palestinian narrative locally and internationally.

Employ technology, artificial intelligence, and virtual tours in cultural documentation and production.

Strengthen the presence of Palestinian narratives and places in public and digital spaces.