Activities


Palestinian Traditional Music & Song Archive

In order to preserve Palestinian traditional music and songs the Center launched a project to collect and record music and songs from villages, refugee camps, and towns throughout the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Galilee. During the length of the project the Center compiled over 220 hours of recordings of traditional music and songs. In addition, photographs and video film footage of the local musicians, singers and traditional ceremonies were taken to ensure proper documentation. The recordings have been stored and edited on DAT tapes in cooperation with the Birzeit University Media Training Unit.

The tapes and other documentation are stored in a special Audiovisual Archive that was built within the Center specifically for this purpose. This archive, the only Traditional Palestinian Music Archive in existence, has proven to be an invaluable resource for the general public, local and international musicians, ethnomusicologists, researchers, and educational institutions.

As a result of this project a CD, "Traditional Music and Songs from Palestine" was produced in 1997, and a research study on "Palestinian Traditional Musical Instruments" was published in Arabic in 1999. In addition, four traditional musicians from the West Bank were invited to perform at the Institute of World Cultures in Paris in 1997.



Palestine International Festival

From 1987 to 1992, the PAC began promoting local music and dance groups by organizing several local arts festivals. In 1993, the Center was able to launch the first Palestine International Festival for Music and Dance.

The objective of the festival was to promote international links and to break the cultural isolation of Palestinian society caused by the occupation. The festival proved to be a huge success and for the next seven years became an annual national event attracting over 20,000 people each year. The Festival was the largest and most prestigious international event in Palestine hosting music and dance groups from all over the world, including Chile, Cuba, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, France, Spain, Britain, Greece, Turkey, Norway, Italy and elsewhere. Hundreds of volunteers participated in the annual festival, while numerous local businesses, foreign embassies, consulates and international organizations, provided material and financial support, which greatly contributed to its success.

As a result of the success of the festival, various local non-governmental and governmental organizations began developing numerous festivals throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip.



Children’s Programs

The PAC first launched the Art For Everybody project in 1990, which ran for two months each year, exposing underprivileged kids from poor neighborhoods and refugee camps to art, music, drama and puppet theatre.

In October 2000, the centre initiated children’s programs in response to the Israeli aggression and the traumatic effect it had on children. The PAC started hosting 200-300 children in the Centre every week. This program was expanded to cover children from impoverished areas and refugee camps, who were the most neglected in terms of after school activity.

The Our Kids and Just For Kids programs provide workshops in dance, drama, music and art for children. The Our Kid’s Teachers program compliments the Our Kids program, qualifying participants to become workshop leaders in the PAC program and enabling them to lead performing arts workshops independently within their own communities.

The PAC continues to develop new children’s programs, including the Youth Video Production Program and the Art Production for Children and Youth.


Dance School

The Popular Art Centre was the first Palestinian cultural centre to offer a variety of dance classes throughout the year for children and adults. The “dance school” in PAC provides traditional Palestinian dabke and ballet dance courses for children from 6-14 years, and dabke and modern dance classes for adults. Special dance courses are also frequently organized with training given by visiting professional dancers. The dance hall was renovated in 1998, providing better facilities for dance courses, the El-Funoun Dance Troupe and other dance groups who use the hall for training sessions. The PAC dance school remains the only one of its kind in Palestine.


Cinema Club

 
During the first Intifada (1987 to 1994), all cinemas were closed in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by the Israeli occupation army. To maintain this important educational and entertaining activity, the Centre set up a Cinema Club in 1987 and organized occasional film evenings. In 1996 the Centre was able to develop this small cinema club into a cinemateque. More recently, a café was set up outside the cinema. Two films are screened nightly and special film weeks are organized in cooperation with Arab & foreign institutions such as Beirut DC, the British Council and the French Cultural Centre. The Cinema Club also offers a wide selection of Palestinian, Arab and international movies on video & DVD for rent.