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Dukkana presents:
Counter Practice

A series of workshops, screenings and discussions where fourteen SWANA artists and creatives will share their skills, knowledge and practices across the Dukkana counter.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

Program:

Aug. 22, 2026

Digitising Arabic & Non-Latin Type

presented by

Safa El Samad

Drawing on skills Safa has developed through her background in Fashion Design and Architecture, this class explores ways to translate real world references into digital type and design.

The class begins with manual tracing techniques, followed by a range of digital approaches to creating and digitising type, with a focus on Arabic and non-Latin scripts. Participants will learn how to correctly format Arabic text, as well as develop type and compositions from found references.

Participants will also learn basic 3D modelling techniques to create 3D references for exploring form, light, shadows and texture. The class will conclude with an introduction to embroidery digitisation.

Participants are encouraged to bring their own reference material that may be incorporated as examples throughout the session.

What to bring:
Material typography references (Physical or digital)
A laptop if you'd like to follow along
A notebook and pen for notes

Software used:
Photoshop
Illustrator
Rhinoceros 3d
Wilcom

Safa El Samad is a second generation Lebanese settler living and working on Wurundjeri land. An architecture graduate from Monash University, her practice sits between fashion and architecture, focusing on repair, material care and the afterlives of garments and spaces

Safa El Samad Tickets

Aug. 30, 2026

Creating Your Own Archive

presented by

Anna Emina El Samad

Are you interested in archiving but don’t know where to start?

Archives have traditionally been seen as institutional, found in museums or libraries. However, archives can been found in almost every ethnic home. Think of the garages full of books, the boxes of photographs, the bags and bags of clothing stored in the cupboard or under the bed. Anna Emina will discuss what to think about when making your own archive, and why they’re important to continuing culture and community.

This workshop is an opportunity to curate and preserve a personal project that may include photographs you want to put together, family or community stories you want to compile.

This event is most suitable for small scale projects that seek to archive psychical materials that can be documented in a folder, photo album or scrap book.

What to bring:
Personal archival materials eg photographs, notes, documents, memorabilia, art, letters, posters etc.

Anna Emina is an educator, curator and writer based in Naarm. Her practice centres around collaboration and seeks to creative accessible opportunities for people of colour to connect with contemporary art in Australia.

Anna Emina El Samad Tickets

Sep. 5, 2026

Building Community Through Culture: From an Idea to a Community

presented by

Karim Nasser

A two-part workshop exploring how communities build cultural spaces and organise around film. Drawing on Miya Miya Film Club as a case study, participants reflect on cultural gaps in their own communities and imagine collective responses through discussion and mapping exercises that explore belonging, representation, and sustainability, with a focus on SWANA diasporic contexts. The workshop concludes with a screening of Talking About Trees, following the real story of a film club being revived in Sudan.

Karim Nasser is a cultural programmer, community leader, and emerging legal practitioner based in Sydney. He is the founder of Miya Miya, a SWANA cultural platform dedicated to building community through film, arts, and cultural exchange. Alongside his cultural work, Karim is Head of Operations at WAGEC, one of Australia's leading organisations supporting women and children experiencing homelessness and domestic and family violence. His professional and community work is driven by a commitment to creating institutions and spaces that foster safety, connection, and belonging. Karim is also a UEFA and AFC-accredited football coach with extensive experience in elite youth development, having coached within the National Premier League for over a decade. Throughout his coaching career, he has worked with and identified players who have progressed to professional environments and represented Australia at the international level, including the Matildas and Olyroos. Across culture, community services, sport, and law, Karim's work centres on developing people, strengthening communities, and creating pathways for participation, leadership, and belonging.

Karim Nasser Tickets

Sep. 12, 2026

Writing Workshop for Neurospicy Arab Girls*

presented by

Lamisse Hamouda

A shared space to write, reflect and talk about your experiences, explore the intersections of race, culture, faith, gender, sexuality in your experience with neurodivergence and develop a preferred vocabulary to share your lived experience in your own words.

Lamisse Hamouda (QLD) is an award-winning writer, youth worker and workshop facilitator. Her first book The Shape of Dust (Pantera Press, 2023), co-authored with her father, Hazem Hamouda, delves into her father’s experience of being a dual citizen imprisoned abroad, and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and won the 2024 National Biography of the Year Award. Lamisse is also a youth worker specialised in trauma-informed care for Unaccompanied Humanitarian Minors in residential care. Lamisse has delivered creative writing workshops across Australia and Europe, from Queensland Writer's Centre to the Barcelona College of Art and Design. In 2025, Lamisse was a Keesing Studio Resident at the Cité Internationales des Arts in Paris. Lamisse holds a Bachelor of Arts (Governance and International Relations) from the University of Sydney, and is undertaking a Masters of Narrative Therapy & Community Work at the University of Melbourne. She currently sits on the board with Runway Journal, an experimental arts and literary digital platform, as an Editor and Engagement and Development Coordinator.

Lamisse Hamouda Tickets

Sep. 19 & 20, 2026

When the Object Writes

presented by

Azza Zein

What would an object say if it was collecting our shared memories and experiences? What
maps would it draw? Through what vantage point? What surface will it describe and what
bodily excess will it hold on to? Can such collective speculation give us a new insight to the
neighbourhood?

The two-day writing and drawing workshop is led by artist and writer Azza Zein. Participants
will be introduced to ficto-critical writing as an artistic strategy to link texts and images in
relation to speculation around notions of migration, displacement and the relation between
land and labour. The workshop extends from Zein’s collaborative series Tashabok. The
sessions will start with a neighbourhood walk: participants will collect found objects and
images that become prompts for collective drawing, conversation and writing. The focus will
be to allow participants to develop texts from the points of view of objects. The texts and
images produced will be used to create a collaborative artistic publication.

Azza Zein is an interdisciplinary artist and writer living in Narrm/Melbourne, whose installations and writing explore the dematerialisation of the economy, the invisibility of labour and the economic conditions surrounding mobility and trade. In 2025, she was un Projects guest-editor for issue19.2. In 2026, she will be a Gertrude studio artist and Bundanon artist in residence. She has published in journals like Art + Australia, Kohl Journal for Body and Gender Research, and un Extended. She has contributed an essay to the Care Ethics and Art anthology (Routledge) and catalogue essays to ACCA publications. In 2026, she is unProjects guest-editor for the issue.

Azza Zein Tickets

Sep 26, 2026

Diagramming Proximal Relationships to Conflict: The Individual and War From Afar

presented by

Bader Rizk

Diagrammatic Proximal Relationships to Conflict is a design activity inviting participants into discussions on the immigrant's relationship to conflict. Through a series of diagramming rounds, participants map their situated awareness of conflict, then build on these diagrams using memory and lived experience, developing their own visual language for what conflict means to them. Discussion throughout interrogates the diagram itself: can it become spatial, move beyond the two-dimensional page, or incorporate mixed media? The session celebrates lived experience and witnessing as central to shaping how we diagram, and understand, conflict.

Bader Rizk is a current PhD candidate undertaking his research at Monash Architecture. With a background in architecture Bader is interested in how violence is experienced on and through architectural spaces, in a paradoxical condition where architecture becomes the agent for military weaponisation whilst also being its victim. Combining architectural and fine arts approaches to visualisation, Bader sees the diagram as a tool for revealing otherwise covert relationships between space, conflict, materials and people, experimenting with the multidisciplinary approaches to visualise these complex systems the diagram, sculpture, model and image become the agents of truth telling.

Bader Rizk Tickets

Oct. 4, 2026

The Dukkana Times

presented by

Majed Fayad

This workshop invites participants to collaboratively create The Dukkana Times, a collective newspaper capturing the stories, memories, and cultural life of Dukkana's SWANA "third space". Working in small groups, participants contribute images, poetry, illustrations, recipes, playlists, and personal reflections, shaping a 16-page Risograph-printed publication (covers designed by Majed Fayad and Safa). Once complete, the newspaper joins a collective time capsule to be buried and opened in 2049, the year Blade Runner 2049 is set.

Majed Fayad is a Lebanese-Australian multidisciplinary artist based in Melbourne / Naarm. He recently completed a Master of Fine Arts (Research) at the Victorian College of the Arts. His practice explores the intersections of Middle Eastern and Western cultures through Arab-Futurist world-building, examining themes of diaspora, cultural identity, dreaming, hospitality, and belonging. Fayad has exhibited at Arts Centre Melbourne, George Paton Gallery, Melbourne Design Week, MPavilion, Testing Grounds, Blindside, Seventh Gallery, and Kings Artist-Run, among others. Through a lens of diasporic belonging, Fayad constructs speculative environments that are simultaneously utopian and dystopian, imagining alternative cultural futures shaped by migration and hybridity. Working across installation, performance, sound, graphic design, and spatial interventions, his projects foreground heterotopic spaces where memory, identity, and visions of the future coexist across past, present, and speculative temporalities.

Majed Fayad Tickets

Oct. 10, 2026

Improvisational Sound for Collapse Metabolism

presented by

Nadeem Tiafau Eshraghi

Improvisational Sound for Collapse Metabolism explores the interactive space between our lived experiences, digital media, environments and objects.

Expanding on the frameworks and methodologies within their installation and performance practices, artist Nadeem Tiafau Eshraghi will guide conversations and processes on sound as experience, memory, and ritual.

Participants are invited to bring their own artefacts and screen/field recordings. We will then prepare a performance environment, creating a dialogue between the objects, media, elements and bodies in the room. We will be working with contact mics, hydrophones, microphones, an audio interface, and then processing the audio in Ableton.

This is an experimental practice for sound-based pursuits outside of music. There are no musical foundations required to engage with this workshop, just bring your most curious sensitivities.

Nadeem Tiafau Eshraghi is an artist, designer and organiser of Sāmoan and Persian descent. They are interested in communities as vessels, relational dynamics, and nuanced cultural transmissions. Through sound, sight and space, they distil their lived experiences, mark contemporary rituals, and offer universal deviations.

Nadeem Tiafau Eshraghi Tickets

Oct. 15, 2026

Choir-eoke

presented by

Nadia Hanaan

Choir-eoke — karaoke meets choir. Come sing your heart out with vocal warm-ups, an hour of group singing with harmonies taught on the fly, and a cooldown. Request your favourite songs, take the lead or blend into the group, the night shapes itself around what the room wants. All levels welcome; all you need is a love of making loud noises to music.

Nadia Hanaan is a Bedouin-“Australian” people-gatherer, conversation-haver, and musician (as Sookie Lala.) After a life time of chit chatting- in cars with friends, during class, as a creative business consultant, around dinner tables, as a podcast co-host- Nadia realised that actually, yeah, meaningful connection is her most honed and cherished skill. And when combined with her deep love for problem solving, Nadia’s social gathering, community engagement, people-connecting endeavours know no bounds.

Nadia Hanaan Tickets

Oct. 24, 2026

Teaching to Transform

presented by

Justine Makdessi

A facilitated and intimate workshop examining the tenets of transformative practices in education and organising that decentre western-imperial and European ontologies. Yhis workshop will consider the SWANA ethic of hospitality as a framework for practice.

Justine Makdessi is a Lebanese Maltese Naarm-based artist, educator and organiser, with over 10 years experience teaching and leading transformative practices in flexible education settings across Victoria. Justine is interested in interrogating power and challenging its distribution within systems to achieve social justice and transformation. Justine is a unionist and community organiser, belonging to the Organising Committee of Teachers and School Staff for Palestine Victoria and Fight the Crisis (AEU).

Justine Makdessi Tickets TBA

Oct. 31, 2026

It's Not Just For Architects

presented by

Youssef Ibrahim

Rethinking the Architecture Moodboard — most people have a moodboard for fashion, products, or graphic design, but rarely for architecture. This session asks why architecture stays exclusive and esoteric compared to other design disciplines, and explores how we might make it more familiar and accessible

Youssef Ibrahim is a multidisciplinary Designer/artist and a recent honours graduate in architecture and construction management. Working across architecture, digital art and painting, his work touches on notions of cultural identity, the orientalist gaze, ironic sincerity, Hegelian dialectics and propaganda, Housing, Social space, and alternative forms of sustainable social design. His current research spans postmodern architecture, Hauntological study of urban environments, interpreting contemporary philosophy using architecture and how to make architecture more accessible and approachable.

Youssef Ibrahim Tickets TBA

Nov. 13, 2026

Heaven Scent - Making Rose Water Together

presented by

Justine Youssef

This workshop invites audiences to collaboratively distill the scent of a plant significant to the local ecosystem. Drawing on a traditional distillation method native to my village in Lebanon, the workshop creates an intimate, hands-on experience centred on local botany and place. The specific plant will be selected after some research time, focusing on species that are native, aquatic, or invasive to the area around Dukkana, opening a dialogue on local environmental histories and ecologies. I will guide a small group of participants through the entire process, from preparing the plant matter to collecting the final distillate.

Justine Youssef is a film and installation artist whose work is informed by ethnobotany and guided by worldbuilding processes. She guest-edited Runway Journal Issue #49: 'BLOOM', curating contributions on themes of alchemy and repair. Her solo exhibition 'Somewhat Eternal' toured to Adelaide Contemporary Experimental (2024), the Institute of Modern Art (2024), and UTS Gallery (2023). Earlier work was exhibited at the Hawaiʻi Triennale (2022), Powerhouse Museum (2022), and Museum of Contemporary Art (2021). She lives and works on Dharug Country in Western Sydney, where First Nations sovereignty was never ceded.

Justine Youssef Tickets TBA

Nov. 27 & 29, 2026

Counter Histories: Research Through West Asian Family Photos

presented by

Dr Sary Zananiri &
Dr Özge Calafato

A two-session workshop on family photos and histories of vernacular photography in Western Asia. In this specialist workshop, participants will be introduced to photographic theory and analysis of historical photographs from West Asia, which they will then be able to apply that to their own family photos. Participants will be asked to bring in a family photo for session 1 and to complete research on that photo and perhaps others for session 2.

Artist and cultural historian Sary Zananiri works across photography, installation, and archival research to explore intersections of history, memory, and identity. His practice is engaged with transnational narratives, with a particular focus on the Arab World and its diasporas. Drawing on overlooked archives, including that of photographer Frank Scholten, his work examines religion, nationalism, and modern processes of identity formation. Zananiri has exhibited internationally and published widely, with his research-led practice bridging scholarly inquiry and contemporary visual practice. His recent book Photographing Biblical Modernity: Frank Scholten in British Mandate Palestine (I.B. Tauris) was just released and his work Crossing seas and following stars was awarded the Blake Next Gen Scholarship.

Writer, curator, and academic, Özge Calafato is a Lecturer in Literary and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. From 2014 to 2020, she was Assistant Director of Akkasah: Center for Photography at NYU Abu Dhabi. Her research focuses on vernacular photography, archives, migration, transnational histories, and collective memory. She is the author of Making the Modern Turkish Citizen: Vernacular Photography in the Early Republican Era (I.B.Tauris/Bloomsbury, 2022).

Dr Sary Zananiri Dr Özge Calafoto Tickets TBA

Dec. 12, 2026

TBA

presented by

Feras Shaheen

TBA

Feras Shaheen is a Palestinian artist, curator and community organiser currently based in Nipaluna. Feras is also the co-president of TPAN (Tasmanian Palestine Advocacy Network). He iscurious in letting his conceptual interests lead him across a variety of mediums. Working with choreography, installation work, film, performance, design, and street dance to communicate his ideas, the core of Feras’ practice is to connect and engage audiences. He seeks to bring activism into his art practice, with outcomes that are accessible and community centred. Holding a Bachelor in Design from Western Sydney University (2014), Feras often subverts traditional relationships between mediums to challenge audiences' perspectives, specifically to disrupt colonial discourses and reduce western reliance on neutrality and apathy. Born in Dubai to Palestinian parents (Gaza/Al Lid), and moving to Western Sydney at age 11, Feras engages with his practice as a way to reflect and examine how he views the world, addressing local and global issues. Winner of The Australian Ballet’s Telstra Emerging Choreographer (TEC) in 2021, Feras has performed and exhibited at Carriageworks, Venice Biennale, Pari, Kampnagel, AGNSW, Campbelltown Arts Centre, and Théâtre de la Ville. Recent works include ‘Blocked Duwar’, ‘Art Festival’, ‘Humanising’, ‘Al Pheniq’, ‘Sharing Histories’ and ‘Dance Dance Intifada’.

Feras Shaheen Tickets TBA