LAAF 2025 festival programme revealed

Liverpool Arab Arts Festival (LAAF) takes place this month with a line-up from across the Arab world.

The annual festival takes place from July 11-20 at venues including the Bluecoat, Unity Theatre, the Music Room at Philharmonic Hall, Walker Art Gallery, FACT and Sefton Park Palm House.

It is set to showcase and celebrate some of the best of Syrian, Jordanian, Egyptian, Palestinian, Yemeni, Lebanese and Tunisian culture. Countries like Algeria and Bahrain are also represented in a programme which includes visual art, performance, music, comedy, literature, film and food.

The theme for 2025 is Nostalgia.

The festival opens at the Unity Theatre on July 11 with Hamzeh Al Hussien’s Penguin. Al Hussien’s extraordinary story takes viewers on a personal tour of the places he knows best, from his village in the Syrian mountains to Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan to Gateshead, and inside his mind: a place full of music, dancing, fantasies and marbles.

The Unity is also the venue for one-woman show A Grain of Sand on July 18 which takes an intimate look at war through the eyes of a child and was originally commissioned by London Palestine Film Festival.

LAAF’s film programme features two animations, Dounia - The Princess of Aleppo and the UK premiere of Dounia – The Great White North, at the Plaza Cinema at Crosby on July 13; Archiving Nostalgia, featuring two shorts and a full-length documentary, which comes to FACT on July 14, and The Legend of the Looms at Toxteth TV on July 17.

Above: Hamzeh Al Hussien brings Penguin to the Unity Theatre.

Arabs Are Not Funny brings giggles to the Bluecoat on July 12, while the Yamama Cafe and Bar in Parliament Street is hosting a Jordanian Food and Cultural Experience on July 15.

There are literary events at the School Lane venue on July 13 (Hadi Badi Children’s Workshop) and July 16 where Comma Press’s new anthology Palestine Minus One will be launched with a unique evening of stories and discussion.

Then on July 18, VideOdyssey at Toxteth TV is the venue for Book of Sana’a, a celebration of storytelling, writing and music from Yemen’s capital city. The event will feature poetry readings including award-winning Hamdan Dammag.

Music comes from violin virtuoso Akram Abdulfattah who will appear at Philharmonic Hall’s Music Room on July 19. The young Palestinian-American combines jazz with middle eastern and Indian music, with a style that creates a world of fusion music.

Amman-born, Canada-based artist Nour Bishouty is exhibiting at the Walker Art Gallery as part of this summer’s Liverpool Biennial.

Above: Artist Sarah Al-Sarraj presents Limbs of the Lunar Disc at World Museum.

And the visual arts programme also includes a new video installation, Limbs of the Lunar Disc: Isthmus Ancient River, running at World Museum throughout the festival. Artist Sarah Al-Sarraj will give a special performance-lecture at the venue on July 12.

Meanwhile LAAF’s popular annual Family Day returns, taking place at Sefton Park Palm House on July 20 to bring the 2025 festival to a close.

Expect a free afternoon of music, performance and authentic Arab culture, complemented by a range of stalls offering Arabic and Middle Eastern food, arts and crafts, traditional practices such as calligraphy and dance, as well as activities for children, including storytelling and workshops.

Founded in 1998, LAAF exists to support and champion creatives from across the Arab region and its diaspora, in the belief that ‘art and creativity have the power to express a shared humanity’.

The theme Nostalgia evokes a longing for the past, both in individual and collective experiences. Whether rooted in childhood memories or recent defining moments, it often has an idealised or romanticised connotation.

Liverpool Arab Arts Festival runs from July 11-20. More details HERE