Sustainable Living - LiBeirut the UNESCO-Funded Festival Marks the Resumption of Cultural Life in Beirut
Sustainable Living
Over the course of three days, from 2 to 4 July 2021, the TERDAD festival (resonate in English) brought back the creative echoes of Beirut bringing a stop to the defeating sounds of the double explosion that struck the city last year in the heart of its creative neighborhoods.
Created by UNESCO under its flagship initiative LiBeirut for the recovery of the city, the festival brings together five local cultural associations that propose different forms of art, after having provided them with urgent financial support to the local artists through a coproduction programme.
With more than 16 live performances and 200 artists, a series of public cultural activities including dance, theater, cinema, music and comics marked the resumption of the creative activities of the city, much needed today to regain a sense of normalcy, a sense of life and hope. The activities are organized in the schools and cultural spaces of Mar Mikhael, Gemmayze, Quarantina, and Sursock.
Following the massive explosions that struck Beirut on 4 August 2020, bringing the lives of hundreds of people to a halt and causing severe damage to the historic neighborhoods and cultural institutions in the city, UNESCO launched LiBeirut mobilising leading organizations and experts from Lebanon and abroad in an effort to coordinate emergency and longer-term measures to safeguard the city’s severely damaged education system and cultural heritage.
This project has been financed by the Government of Iceland, the Government of Kuwait and UNESCO's Heritage Emergency Fund through the generous support of the following partners - the Qatar Fund for Development, the Kingdom of Norway, the Government of Canada, ANA Holdings, the Principality of Monaco, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Republic of Estonia, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the Slovak Republic, the Principality of Andorra, and the Republic of Serbia.