Nordic Culture Point is the contact point for Nordic cultural cooperation and serves as the secretariat for cultural programmes funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers. Two of Shahrazad's literary tours, Hakawati and Mem Û Zîn, have received funding from the art and culture program, and were invited to the Nordic Culture Fund Conference to showcase the projects.
The Hakawati and Mem Û Zîn tours have brought exiled and Scandinavian writers together to share stories and interact on the basis of literature and poetry. "It's been a fantastic opportunity for the writers to meet colleagues and reach new audiences," says Shoresh Ibrahim, Shahrazad's coordinator at Kulturforvaltningen in Stockholm. "The Hakawati tour was very well received by the majority language audiences, and especially by the Arabic-speaking minority, as the project has a very positive focus on Arabic language and literature". The goal has been to invite exiled writers to join the tours in order for them to meet other writers, both writers in similar situations and local writers.
The tours have given Arabic and Kurdish exiled writers an outlet through 14 events in Sweden, Norway and Denmark just in the fall of 2008. Stockholm has since organised six Mem Û Zîn events, engaging 35 writers and musicians, and reaching an audience of about 500 people in total. More events are to come in Norway during the fall of 2009. "Another positive outcome has been the fact that Arabic and Kurdish audiences have been invited to venues they usually do not frequent," says Shoresh Ibrahim. "At one of the Mem Û Zîn events, about half of the 150 people in the audience had a Kurdish background. Such a mixed audience is very rare for these types of events and venues, and it goes to show that the events have not been literary evenings only, but also evenings of integration".
The success of Hakawati and Mem Û Zîn have encouraged the Scandinavian Shahrazad partners to carry on the idea of these tours, and Latin America will be the focus region in the semesters to come.
