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The curated sessions have been added for the UAE's Year of Tolerance
19 February 2019
| Last updated on 19 February 2019
In honour of the UAE's Year of Tolerance, a new strand has been introduced for this year's festival...
Announced at the pre-festival launch - along with the news of the festival's new golden tickets - organisers revealed details of a new "Beyond Tolerance" stand, which will feature specially curated sessions that will treat the UAE's Year of Tolerance as a starting point for discussion.
These sessions will explore what is meant when we talk about tolerance, and what sort of values we are looking for in a just and compassionate society.
His Excellency Sheikh Nahyan Mubarak Al Nahyan, UAE Cabinet Member and Minister of Tolerance said, “The Emirates Literature Festival is an iconic cultural institution and a highlight of the annual cultural landscape of the United Arab Emirates.
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"The Ministry of Tolerance is proud to support the ‘Beyond Tolerance’ stream of this year’s festival that coincides with the ‘Year of Tolerance’. The recent visit of His Holiness Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of al-Azhar Dr Ahmed el-Tayeb to the United Arab Emirates and their joint promotion of human fraternity as a catalyst to the building of a more peaceful and tolerant world, provide an excellent backdrop for the compelling ‘Beyond Tolerance’ strand.”
To encourage dynamic interaction with the Tolerance strand, a recording booth at the Festival with audiobooks company Storytel who will record words of tolerance from festival visitors, enabling them to actively engage with the theme. The best contributions will be included in a LitFest audio file which will be available to be downloaded from Storytel for free.
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There will also be an installation from the Dubai Audio Library and the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), in collaboration with the website Bookshare.org. The Dubai Audio Library targets seven million visually impaired people in the Arab world, and this will be the first time that the process of how books are turned into audio will be on display.
About the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature
The Festival, which takes place from 1-9 March, is held in partnership with Emirates Airline and the Dubai Culture & Arts Authority (Dubai Culture), the Emirate’s dedicated authority for heritage, arts, and culture. The Festival begins Dubai Culture’s flagship art initiative Dubai Art Season (DAS), which features a two-month citywide activation of art events.
This year’s Festival theme is ‘United by Words’, celebrating stories that connect, entertain, inspire and captivate. The exciting programme has something for everyone, with subjects covering all genres of fiction, a huge breadth of non-fiction topics, plus children, family and youth sessions and more, brought to life by more than 170 authors from all over the world.
About the Beyond Tolerance strand
This new strand takes the idea of a tolerant society as a starting point for discussions of the kind of world we want to live in. Sessions that explore this theme include:
How You Can Change the World: James Owens and Lucy Siegle
Do you ever look at the humanitarian and environmental crises happening all over the world and feel guilty or powerless? This panel takes a look at some of the ways people make a difference.
New Politics, Old Identities: Shereen Abouelnaga, Shahad Al Rawi & Jabbour Douaihy
How does political discourse shape our identities? Our panel investigates the role of imaginative fiction in understanding, defining and preserving one’s sense of identity.
Books…Represent!: Selina Tusitala Marsh, Taran Matharu & Robin Stevens
What do we gain when we start representing a greater breadth of human experience? Three writers share how they approach the important task of authentically representing different backgrounds and perspectives.
Conflict Resolution: Nadifa Mohamed, Ashis Ray & Lalage Snow
Our panel of fiction and non-fiction writers discusses how we move on from conflict and build a better world – and what we can learn from people who find personal peace amid violence.
Please visit the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature website to see event timings and view the full strand.
