Sheikh Abreik Festival

700 events * 2,000 artists and creators * 4 days of an informal, autonomous, mind boggling civic celebration * free entrance * in homes and yards, on the streets, in our community centers, on the trees * performances, parties, picnics, exhibitions, workshops, journeys, and artistic adventures of every kind, genre, status, and gender! Sheikh Abreik Festival is a huge monumental collective work of art that fabricates an originative community and enables the cultural freedom of the people to flourish. Sheikh Abreik Festival is a unique event in Israel that will take place in Kiryat Tivon for the third consecutive year. The festival is held over the last weekend before Passover (10-13 April, 2019) and its full name – Sheik Abreik Civil Culture Festival – attests to its essence: culture belongs to the citizens and grows from within them, as individuals and as originative communities; not as a result of governmental forces or economic interests. The festival is the local initiative of Kiryat Tivon residents, who create, produce, and organize all of its events. The concept is simple: you do whatever you want to do, you take full responsibility for your initiative, and you get others to help you realize it. In April 2019, approximately 700 cultural events, involving over 2,000 people, all volunteers, will take place throughout the entire town: in private homes, in yards, in the surrounding woods, in public buildings, and in the streets. The festival is a hosting festival, and visitors from outside of Kiryat Tivon are invited to stay in the people's homes and pitch tents in their yards. The program includes hundreds of musical gigs of every genre and kind, theatric plays and performances, a circus village that will operate for the entire four days, Chef Abreik – Community Culinary dispersed throughout town, a refugee camp, screening of films, exhibitions, nature walks and workshops, a Limmud (study) site on the Oranim campus, rooftop and street parties, Shabbat events for the entire family on the banks of the Kishon river, dancing in an abandoned flour mill, an open parlor in the center of town, unique performances in the old water tower, numerous activities for children, and many more exciting surprises. The festival also features performances by top musicians, plastic artists, and theater people from throughout Israel. The festival was a huge success in its first two years, drawing thousands of visitors to Kiryat Tivon. It proved itself as an independent-volunteer initiative that is unique in Israel and the world in terms of its concept and scope of people involved. It has connected various communities and has revived the civil culture in Kiryat Tivon in an unprecedented manner, inspiring the establishment of other similar civil festivals that have sprouted up in other places around Israel. Film credits: Photography: Jonathan Zaid Additional photographs: The community Editing: Yarden Gat