Askadar is a creative cultural centre in the city of Nablus in the Northern West Bank. A hillside city that is also home to the biggest refugee camp in the West Bank, Balata. Children from all over the city find it hard to access many of the arts including Music, Dance and Drama due to the occupation which has altered the mind-set of many locals and made them afraid to become open to such ideas.
The centre opened its doors in March 2017 and has been providing much needed culture and arts activities to the children of Nablus since. Now in 2019 Askadar is engaging 120 students in art activities such as: Ballet, Dabka, Music and Drawing.
Most of our students are between 3 and 15 years old.
Askadar was founded by a group of young artists and entrepreneurs with a goal of educate children in music and dance and give them a safe, family-friendly environment for them to explore their creativity, the founders believes in the importance of art activities especially in the area of Nablus.
Nablus is a conservative city where it’s very rare to find a safe place where children can be engaged in a healthy activity, this is where Askadar’s role begins and it’s mainly by protecting those kids from the danger of spending their time either on internet or in the streets.
We try to engage more people into the culture and arts scene through our social activities where we invite public school students, UN school students, housewives and others to freely participate in dance, yoga, music, cinema, drama workshops which we believe gives a good introduction about specific subjects and make them more related to the school.
We offer different dancing classes for different ages. Having assistance in providing trainers and logistic responsibilities will be very important for the sustainability of Askadar and the quality for the programmers offered by its participants. We have a dream of making Askadar a centre for social change within Nablus, although we have already began this change alot is needed to be done. We want to be able to host artists, teachers, lecturers and musicians in the future to inspire these children, that’s why this conference will be a left for the future of Askadar and for all its participants around the city of Nablus.
