Alaa Abdelhamid (Egypt) for his project combining the publication of his text The Story of an Object with the creation of this same object in bronze and a new video featuring it.
Mounira Al Solh (Lebanon) for her project I Strongly Believe in Our Right to Be Frivolous, for which she will produce portrait drawings and poetically fictionalized texts from individual stories of people who have had to flee their homes in Syria and settle in Lebanon and elsewhere.
Fehras Publishing Practices (Kenan Darwich, Omar Nicolas, and Sami Rustom) — a publisher and space established in Berlin in 2015 by a group of Syrian researchers, artists, and book designers — for their project When the Library was Stolen, in which they document and research the (partially stolen) private library of Syrian author and novelist Abd Al-Rahman Munif (1933–2004).
Jasmina Metwaly (Egypt), with filmmaker Philip Rizk (Egypt), for their new project examining how the theatricality of law creates a system that determines how humans act within and outside given dogmas.
The selection committee of the above grantees comprised: Anna Colin (associate curator, Fondation Galeries Lafayette, Paris, and co-director of Open School East, London), Corinne Diserens (curator and director of Ecole Supérieure des Arts, Brussels, and president of the jury at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart), Hassan Khan (artist, musician, and writer, Cairo), and Mai Abu ElDahab on behalf of YATF.
Kamal Aljafari (Palestine) in support of his film Return to Jaffa.
Reem Shilleh and Subversive Film (Palestine) for the project The Syllabus taking place at the 5th Riwaq Biennial in Ramallah.
Raafat Majzoub (Lebanon) for a three-month sabbatical to complete his novel The Perfumed Garden: An Autobiography of Another Arab World.
Jana Saleh (Lebanon) for the production and presentation of the stage musical Aziza.
Contemporary dancers Noura Hassaneinn and Hend Samy (Egypt) to cover part of the costs of their scholarships to participate in ImPulsTanz in Vienna.
Sven Augustijnen (Belgium) for field research and filming in the Middle East for his project Fierté Nationale, for an exhibition at the Sursock Museum in Beirut.
Yazan Khalili (Palestine) for his project Preventive Conservation, a new commission for the 5th Riwaq Biennial in Ramallah.
Mohamed Elshahed (Egypt) for the upcoming print issue of Cairo Observer.
Tashweesh (Palestine) for the band’s new production and presentation at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
The selection committee of the above grantees comprised: Roger Christmann (freelance cultural manager, Berlin), Joana Hadjithomas (artist and filmmaker, Beirut and Paris), Nav Haq (curator at Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen-MuHKA, Antwerp), Lara Khaldi (freelance curator, Jerusalem and Amsterdam), and Mai Abu ElDahab (director of YATF, Brussels).