In late 2019 and 2020, at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, several cultural institutions in Palestine were on the brink of closure due to insufficient funds. This reality was compounded with the fact that many people lost jobs during the pandemic, not merely in the field of arts and culture or other organizations working in civil society but in the wider economic ecosystems that typically thrive alongside these institutions.

The Question of Funding collective was born out of the first two assemblies at the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center and focused on questions that directly affected the livelihood of entire sectors and people.

Held in 2019, our first assembly was entitled "Funding: How do we rethink the economic crisis from a cultural point of view?". It gathered a number of individuals and groups from across Palestine and yielded a heap of material, from testimonials and interventions, to glossaries and other inputs from different participants across various sectors and localities. We centered the meeting on one question: what does funding mean to you? As a result, we divided the answers we received from the participants into different themes and consolidated all the ensuing discussions with the question of “How to work together”, or how to approach these themes collectively. The themes but also vectors of research and discussion allowed us to excavate what we already knew and didn’t know yet, what problems others were facing with funding, and what possible solutions we could work on together. Most importantly, we wanted to ask how we can create a structure that would be sustainable, to create and disseminate knowledge, and expand beyond the geography of Ramallah.

To put it simply, we wanted to see how we could rally ourselves to try and find ways to work collectively, not just to assuage present and future crises but to really seek practicable models for economic interdependence and knowledge production in Palestine. Our ongoing work on Dayra, which requires a sustained engagement with the localities in Palestine, puts into practice a model that best reflects the foundational questions that surfaced from the large assemblies. 

In essence, all the projects that we work on not only stem from the generative power of these open discussions but are a continuation of the thinking processes that led us to rethink what we do outside of the current models of cultural and social organizations in Palestine.

“How to work together?” is a comprehensive question under which we sought to pose further issues related to funding and cultural infrastructures, but also the economy in general. 

      
Poster by Nour Hifaoui

Welcome to Aka
Or how to connect to a context?

As a collective in the lumbung and in documenta fifteen, we wanted to work against the usual patterns imposed by big artistic institutions and biennials that typically invite artists and cultural workers to produce works, exhibit them and swiftly leave without having engaged the city and its residents.

In the spirit of the lumbung, we opened one of our spaces in documenta fifteen to other local collectives who were working on their diverse projects and within their own communities. As such, we engaged in long discussions with several Kassel-based collectives and organizations who shared a common goal: to secure a permanent space for their programs and activities. In WH22, the abandoned building we shared with other documenta fifteen artists, they came together to create aka, a decentralized network of self-organizing and grassroots collectives and open space for concerts, workshops, performances, exhibitions, discussions, and more. 

As invited artists, we become hosts to other local guests. They host their activities in our space and we use their space to host our own. The connection with aka extends the map of relations, almost like ripples in a pond that widen the circles of individuals, ideas, and potentials. 

As invited artists, we became hosts to other local guests. They host their activities in our space and we used their space to host our own. The connection with aka extends the map of relations, almost like ripples in a pond that widen the circles of individuals, ideas, and potentials. 

Since December 2022, a few months after documenta fifteen ended, aka have officially become the tenants of WH22, in the hope that they will use and rent the rest of the area in Spring 2023. While the city of Kassel will provide financial support, aka will remain independent and decide how best to use the space and its surroundings. After some time to reflect and develop, aka still hopes that their collective structure will be able to buy WH22 collectively.

The harvest 
Or how to extend knowledge beyond the limitation of the exhibition’s time and space? 

Another key project at documenta fifteen that reflects our questions on economic and human resources takes the form of four books in which we explore issues related to labor, communal resources, and value through illustrated stories addressed to a young readership.

In this context, we worked closely and collectively with artists, illustrators, writers, and translators from Palestine, Lebanon, and the diaspora to develop fictional stories and narratives that explore these questions. How does one explain labor and exchange to children or a general readership? How is the economy tied to the land and how can it harness existing resources in a place like Palestine?

We call these stories harvests because they, in fact, harvest from our earlier questions to deploy others. There aren’t many books that attempt to talk about the economy in our context and we think it is important to foster a collective imagination of what possible futures might hold.

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A Book Like No Other aims to expand children’s perceptions about the wonders of producing a book with communal resources.



Written by: Yazan Khalili
Edited by: Yousri Al Amir
Illustrated by: Sahar Abdallah
Translated to English by Mona Kareem
Translated to German by Larissa Bender
Arabic handwriting by Yazan Khalili
Design by studio safar

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The Song of the Sea: The book is a story about fishing and the importance of inherited knowledge and local resources in economic production.



Written by: Yazan Khalili
Edited by: Yousri Al Amir
Illustrated by: Sahar Abdallah
Translated to English by Mona Kareem
Translated to German by Larissa Bender
Arabic handwriting by Yazan Khalili
Design by studio safar

In line with our ever-evolving questions and to better harness the vast resources that are continually stifled by the harsh economic and political realities in Palestine, our collective is building an economic model called Dayra, which is Arabic for “circle” and “circling”, that materializes existing trust circles within communities. It is a funding system that inverts the existing funding processes: it begins with zero budget and builds up community capital through the circulation of resources. This capital then becomes a local asset that stores value within the community.

Dayra will allow individuals, small businesses and organizations who are experiencing times of financial crises to make use of existing and future resources through trust systems based on blockchain technologies. This model expands on a community-governed economic system that will facilitate and connect local production from small cultural institutions, small businesses and creative industries, household economies, and freelancers to foster social development. This model not only aims to bypass the traditional and restrictive funding models that we have depended on so far but also aims to enlarge the trust circles ensuring a resilient and supplementary economy through which different communities in crisis are able to grow on their own terms.

Dayra was first introduced in the context of documenta fifteen in the form of posters and informative videos. For more details about Dayra, we invite you to visit its website

We are now building the architecture of an application for Dayra. Below are different principles, values, and questions we are still attempting to resolve. We hope that these might help inspire others:

1. Funding based on abundance instead of on scarcity
Dayra functions in a way where the community funds itself while circulating its resources. It self- funds with an abundance of resources.

2. Dayra is based on the circulation of communal debt
Dayra begins from a point of interdependencies. We are indebted to each other, when using Dayra we acknowledge this. We engage in a process of circulating debt. Debt becomes a communal resource; to be indebted to the community means you are part of it.

3. Non-trust based technology practiced within trust communal structures
We use the technology of the blockchain; a trustless tool. We are engulfing it with a community based governance system which is trust based. Using the technology as a medium for socially based infrastructure, the technology becomes only a tool.

4. Funding bottom up. Funds are produced by community sharing their existing resources (communal wealth)
Funds start from zero and build up by sharing resources. Value here is not for building assets, but rather for the act of sharing. What produces value is not assets but rather the sharing of the assets, its circulation within the community.

5. Circular by design
Members cannot accumulate Dayra. It is a medium of circulation and not accumulation. The structure is made so that Dayra is a medium for the continuous circulation of resources.

6. No accumulation of Dayra
If a member attempts to accumulate Dayra, they cannot use it anymore. Members have to keep sharing and using Dayra for it to maintain value.

7. Interdependency between different small economies
One of the aims of Dayra is to connect small and fragile economies together, because it is based on the diversity of economies (artists, freelancers, farmers…)

8. No inflation or deflation. Caps on wallets. Dayra is generated out of expanding members and ecosystem users
Dayra expands with every member, and declines along with their absence. One cannot accumulate a certain amount of Dayras, the relation between the Dayras in circulation and the ones available in the system is always equal. It cannot become a medium of derivatives and speculation. We cannot use financial policies on it, like what is happening now with money. It should remain a very basic medium of exchange.

9. Minting the act of sharing, value based on circulation (against NFT)
Value is produced from the act of sharing, it is not an asset in itself. We are not trying to create NFTs, which produce value for digital assets. Dayra is not an NFT in the sense that we are trying to produce value for the communal exchange processes.

10. Local wealth and extraction: keeping local wealth within the community. One can’t use Dayra outside of its local ecosystem
Every ecosystem can create its own Dayra, it is not our aim that it is globally used. We would be extracting wealth if we do that. Dayra should give value to communal wealth, if we transfer this to other stronger economies Dayra will disappear into that wealth. Through Dayra we attempt to circulate local resources and avoid investing in imported goods, as this is wealth which will leave the community. It is also about encouraging local ecosystems in supporting each other, especially in times of hardship.

11. Validation points as a way to communicate to the shared wealth
The system is divided into two point systems: Dayra and validation points. Validation points are the debt received when a member joins Dayra.  Those validation points are in the communal pot already, what members can do is to transfer them, or validate someone else’s act of sharing through one’s points. Validation points are a declaration of the communal debt. Through points systems, individuals are able to communicate with the common pot.

12. Governance moves from a centralized system towards a decentralized system
Dayra is a centralized system. It starts with governance by members of the Dayra working group or QoF while slowly building tools it will transform into decentralized governance, involving all members.

13. Issues of arbitration and disagreements
Part of what QoF is trying to deal with within the social systems section of Dayra application, is about how to disagree and how to create models and ways of finding resolutions. We are trying to find a way of how the larger community can intervene to solve issues.

14. It is not crypto, it is not currency, it is not a coin…pushing blockchain outside of the fin-tech
We are using blockchain technology in Dayra. Blockchain has lost its potential, as crypto currencies are used to reproduce speculative economies but with a different technology. We return to the basics and promise of what blockchain can give us. We don’t treat Dayra as a national currency, because it is not. We’re trying to use other basic terms, such as points, units, tokens, or simply just Dayra.