The art of telling, reimagined

Every story opens a door.

A living home for the voices, memories and imagination that connect us. Step inside a world where an ancient art finds new ways to be heard.

Find your story ↗What is Hakawati? →

LISTEN · IMAGINE · REMEMBER

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A voice. A circle. A world.

Stories✳Heritage✳Performance✳Belonging✳Imagination

A word with a world inside

For centuries, the storyteller gathered us close.

Hakawati is the Arabic word for a storyteller: the keeper of tales who brings a room to life with voice, gesture and imagination.

In cafés and courtyards, stories travelled from one listener to the next—woven from memory, myth, music and everyday life. We imagine a contemporary stage for that spirit: one where living traditions meet new voices and every listener can become part of the story.

A universe to explore

More than a story. A way to see one another.

Discover storytelling as a shared art: intimate, surprising and always changing with the people who gather around it.

01 · Listen

Voices & tales

Meet the many ways a story can be carried: spoken, sung, remembered and reimagined.

Read a small tale →

02 · Gather

Story circles

Make room for the shared moment between the person telling and the people listening.

Why we gather →

03 · Create

Living arts

Explore the expressive worlds of performance, image, music and oral tradition.

Explore the art →

A little tale to begin

The lantern that remembered the sea

An original micro-story · 2 minute read

At the edge of a city that had forgotten the water, an old lantern glowed blue whenever someone told the truth. One evening, a child asked it where the sea had gone. The lantern flickered—and every window in the sleeping city filled with the sound of waves.

Some stories do not give us directions. They remind us what we have been carrying all along.

The circle is always open

A tradition carried forward, with care.

Listen with presence

Every voice deserves a space where it can be heard on its own terms.

Honor living heritage

Culture is not a museum piece. It grows as people carry it forward.

Make room for many

Our shared world is richer when different stories sit side by side.

Let imagination travel

A story can cross a border, a generation, or the distance between us.

حكاية تجمعنا · A story brings us together

Come closer. There’s room in this story for you.

Begin with a voice, a memory, a question. The rest unfolds when we listen together.

Begin here ↗