Oaken Lab Byblos

“For us, adaptability is not really a theme we chose; it has become part of how we work. Conditions around us can change very quickly — financially, politically, logistically and emotionally — and this affects everything from whether an artist can travel, to when we can announce a programme, to whether an event can happen in the form we originally imagined. Every year, and sometimes every month, we have to reassess, adjust and decide what still makes sense.” - Thimar El Dahr & Elsa Saade, Co-founders Oakenfest

During the Lab, we will take these realities into a wider exchange between festival makers, looking at the practical process of adapting: when a format needs to change, how a new format takes shape, and how to make those decisions intentional without losing what matters at the core.. The Lab aims to confront these detachments and dualities, by providing the time and experience necessary for a multifaceted, inclusive, and socially grounded artistic approach and exchange. Participants bring their own contexts, experiences and ways of working into this exchange.

With Oaken Lab Byblos, The Festival Academy is building on previous Lab experiences in the SWANA region and the Mediterranean and focuses on strengthening relations between these regions. Oaken Lab Byblos centers the cultural understanding of the Levant region. The Labs are incubator hubs for stakeholders of The Festival Academy with the aim to activate the global knowledge of TFA's Alumni community and further deepen connections amongst festival makers worldwide, by providing spaces to catalyse thinking, inspire ideas, and incubate pilot projects that positively impact on society. Festivals are spaces for new ideas as to how we perceive our world and to experiment with different world views together with the communities that attend them and are an active part of them. 

The Lab will be based primarily at Oakenhouse in Jbeil/Byblos, combining facilitated peer exchange with informal conversations, shared meals, time for reflection and encounters with artists and cultural practitioners connected to Oaken’s wider network. Building on previous Labs and on the shared methodologies developed with long‑term partner organisations, we will expand them into a new collective setting where we focus as well on somatic and non‑verbal forms of togetherness. Participants engage in a range of immersive formats - from silent walks and sensory explorations to collaborative work‑in‑progress sessions - creating space for reflection, experimentation and communal time. The programme remains intentionally open, allowing the group constellation to guide the rhythm, depth and direction of the experience, while creating space to exchange around new ideas, purpose, intention, care, curation, art practices, communities, cultural production, collaboration and the different ways festival makers reshape their work and world as conditions change.