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What we are doing

Application deadline: November 20, 2025
Program start date: January 15, 2026
Program Duration: 12 months

During these harsh and precarious times, and with the colossal impact it is having on the Arab world and its diaspora, navigating how to be an art professional today comes with immense vulnerability and confusion. Nevertheless, collectivity, imagination, and hospitality are still resources available to tap into and assume as realities are reshaping, and relationships being reinvented. Mophradat’s program, New Agents, formalizes this experience and creates a frame in which a group is formed and brought together to try to harness their energies, desires, and tools, and mold them into a proposition to be realized and shared publicly.

Through this open call, Mophradat will compose a group of six people from across art fields whose practices are singular, future facing, and committed to public engagement. What the participants also share is that they come from territories whose pasts are formed by overlapping cultural references and conditions, their present tainted by overwhelming violence, and their future unpredictable. Please note that New Agents is primarily directed towards those who already have work experience and an ongoing practice.

Practically, the New Agents will collaborate and learn together and eventually co-develop and realize a proposal that would be made public, in the form of a live event such as a conference, festival, exhibition, or something else. Over the course of one year, the New Agents take part in online workshops with invited artists; one-on-one conversations with an advisor from Mophradat to support them in their individual trajectories; and organize and participate in six weekend-long online seminars, each curated by one of the participants for the group. Midway through the program, the New Agents will be invited for a one-week retreat to work together to produce a complete proposal for the public event that will take place at the end of the year.

Mophradat provides each participant with a stipend of 6000 USD to be used at their discretion, covers the retreat travel costs, and provides a budget for the public event. Mophradat also gives curatorial input through regular conversations with the group regarding their seminars and the eventual public event.

New Agents is only open to those interested to take part in a collective process and enthusiastic to attend its scheduled activities, full participation is therefore mandatory. To fulfill the program’s aspirations, participants must be ambitious, generous, curious, and precise.

Specific eligibility criteria

In addition to complying with the general eligibility criteria that you can read here, please note the following:

  • The applicant must be able to describe and demonstrate their commitment to an ongoing artistic practice and their current engagement in specific art projects.
  • Regardless of their heritage, the applicant must have significant firsthand living experience in the Arab world, and having travelled in the region will be considered an asset.
  • The applicant must have a track record of previous completed art works/projects and must be actively working in the arts since at least four years.
  • The applicant must be curious to engage with different kinds of practices from the textual to the performative and beyond.
  • The applicant must be interested in working collaboratively and in learning about every aspect of a public project from conceptualization to production.
  • The applicant should be a native Arabic speaker or have a strong command of the language; and basic use of English is needed.

Process

  • Once applications are accepted as having fulfilled the program’s general and specific eligibility criteria, they are evaluated and selected by Mophradat.
  • Shortlisted applicants will be invited to an interview on December 2 or 3, 2025.
  • All applicants, whether selected or not, will receive a response to their applications by December 20, 2025.
  • Upon selection, the program participants will sign a grant agreement with Mophradat and receive a timeline and detailed schedule to which they must fully commit.
  • The stipend will be released in three installments: A first installment of 2500 USD at the start of the program, a second installment of 2500 USD midway through the program, and the remaining 1000 USD at the end of the program year.
  • Participants take part in a feedback session at the end of the program and provide a narrative of their experience and reflections.

*Please note that, due to the high volume of applications and the confidentiality of the selection process, Mophradat cannot provide individual feedback explaining why an application was not selected.