Sandpit Arts is a non-profit arts organisation, which creates inspiring, participatory events for local communities. By providing platforms for presenting and discussing the diverse creative cultures of the Middle East, North Africa and their diasporas, our aim is to educate and create cross-cultural understanding. Our engagement with as wide an audience as possible facilitates a more complex understanding of these arts practises and champions creativity of the highest standard.

We are also a space in which this happens dialogically by providing opportunities for Middle Eastern and North African audiences to access the rich cultural and artistic heritage of Britain. We seek to build a shared cultural memory, as we believe this is a route to a more subtle and nuanced understanding beyond the simplifications of ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’.

Our work aims to:

• explore new and critical ways of engaging with and discussing the arts practices of the Middle East, North Africa and their diasporas
• foster more complex understandings of these groundbreaking works by providing platforms for showcasing them
• create entry points into this rich cultural space for those who may not be able to access them
• foster and facilitate creative dialogue between arts practitioners in Britain and those in the Middle East and North Africa