Evaluation Commission

Mohamed Ben Soltane
B’chira Art Centre – Tunisia

Mohamed Ben Soltane is a visual artist and curator exhibiting his work in Tunisia, Germany, Spain, Italy, Algeria, among other countries.
He graduated in 2004 from Higher Institute of Fine Arts of Tunis. He obtained his PhD in 2015 after a research on the recognition of contemporary artists from Africa in West Europe and United States. He is the project manager of SouthMed CV at BAC, Tunisia.

https://www.facebook.com/medbensolt

Houssem Bel Hadj
German Commission for UNESCO Germany

Senior Consultant in Project Management, Networking and development policies, supporting the German Commission for UNESCO in the framework of the SouthMed CV project. He holds a Master of Business Administration with a focus on International Management from the International University of Marketing in San Francisco and a Certificate in Marketing from the University of California Berkeley.

Toni Cots
Interarts – Spain

General Manager of the SouthMed CV project and its consortium at Interarts, Barcelona Spain.
Researcher, teacher, actor and director of Performing Arts as well as cultural operator working and touring internationally. Director of several international arts festivals, artistic coordinator and manager of international performing arts programmes and cultural cooperation regarding exile and refugee issues in Spain, Denmark, Holland and Venezuela. Since 1997, is an Editorial Board member of ‘Performance Research’, Routledge. Between 2007 and 2010, cofounded and directed the MA in Contemporary Arts Practice & Dissemination in collaboration with several High Education Institutions and Cultural Organisations from Spain, UK, Holland and Slovenia. Since 2011, is a cofounder member of CRA’P – Arts practices and research (http://www.cra-p.org/).
He holds a BA in Performing Arts at the Theatre Institute of Barcelona.

Karim Dakroub
Khayal Association for Arts and EducationLebanon

Karim Dakroub is the founder and director of The Lebanese Puppet Theatre and the Mediterranean Puppet Festival in Beirut and the chairman of Khayal Association for Arts and Education. He is a theatre professor at the Lebanese University – Institute of Fine Arts and a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist and psychosocial consultant.
He designed, organised and managed many cultural, artistic and psychosocial projects.
He graduated in 1993 from Saint Petersburg State Theatre Academy and later from Kaslik University and the Lebanese University.

Sameh El Halwany
Gudran for Art and Development – Egypt

Sameh El Halwany is a visual artist interested in community development through art.
He has his own strategy of discovering and artistically recycling neglected spaces in several Arab cities, aiming to link audience to art and artists as well as achieve artistic development of these spaces and communities that lack cultural and artistic spaces for practices that would develop their culture and economic conditions. In 2000, he cofounded Gudran Association for Art and Development and he is currently the General Manager. He won several prizes for artistic projects that helped positive social transformation.

Rania Kamhawi
National Centre for Culture and Arts – Jordan

Deputy Director at the National Centre for Culture and Arts of King Hussein Foundation since 1997. Director of the Amman Contemporary Dance Festival, an annual regional festival founded in 2006 Network, encompassing Lebanon; Palestine, Syria and Jordan. Director of NCCA Dance Department.
Ms. Kamhawi holds a degree in teaching from the Royal Academy of Dance and the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dance in the UK with Distinction. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship as a Scholar in Residence at the University of South Dakota in 1998 with a focus on Culture of the Muslim World; invited as International Choreographer at the 60th anniversary of the Ballet de Havana in Cuba in 2008 and the American Dance Festival, held at Duke University in 1993. She has choreographed many works from the classical repertoire in addition to various original productions.