The goal of the Delia Arts Center is to address this lack of infrastructure.

With a target audience of musicians ages 15-35, this will be the first publicly available space to develop and perfect their skills, build a local and international career, and create a community where they can actively support and learn from one another.

In June 2020, the Delia Arts Center will open the doors to the first Delia Arts Center in Gaza, Palestine. Musicians will have the opportunity to meet, mingle, practice, rehearse, write, record, film, publish, perform, and broadcast their music, while continually honing their skills through professional instruction and support. No such space currently exists, and the need for one has repeatedly and urgently surfaced in conversations with Palestinian musicians.

Over the coming years, future locations will be identified, with the goal to expand the project into a network of cultural spaces that will be accessible at a low cost to musicians living in conflict zones and marginalized communities.

These Centers will each serve a large regional population, in areas where, due to conflict and financial need, similar opportunities do not exist. Once the number of Centers begins to grow, we envision the Centers being tightly connected to each other, as well as to other musical and cultural institutions on and offline, to form a synergistic network for the growth of brand, content, instructional material, artistic and social interaction.

The Centers

Each Center will include:

1. “The Lobby/Cafe” – an open meeting and mingling space, also to be used for regular small performances and special events open to the general public. 
2. “The Woodsheds” – small practice and rehearsal spaces, with basic gear and acoustics for individual and band training. 
3. “The Lab” – a quiet room with personal digital music workstations for training, researching, composing, arranging, pre-production, and post-production.
4. “The Studio” – a basic, well equipped, educational recording studio, for recording, filming, and radio/SoM broadcasting.

Impact

How does one create a music scene in a conflict zone? The Delia Arts Center is the first step towards answering this question. When speaking directly with the musicians in Gaza, the need for affordable and equipped rehearsal and recording space was their biggest need. How can one create music if there’s nowhere to consistently play? How can there be a music “scene” without anywhere to perform? The Delia Arts Center solves these basic problems.

In addition to the physical need for space to play, the Center will be the epicenter for the music scene in Gaza, connecting the musicians and institutions. With a network of like-minded organizations and artists supporting each other, there will be consistent opportunities for greater collaboration.

With the connections of the Delia Arts Foundation, we will also use this space as the focus of our activities in the region, providing an international platform and exposure to the musicians of Gaza who are currently cut off from the rest of the world. We will be live streaming Center activities, showcasing musicians at the Center in our Delia Sessions YouTube series, and bringing in experts from the international music industry to provide trainings.

Our long-term goal is to create a sustainable local and regional music economy that the musicians can thrive in. In an area that is plagued with problems such as poverty and oppression, music can bring the gift of social support to the community, bringing like-minded young people together and keeping them away from violence, marginalization, extremism, and other serious issues in the Palestinian Territories. The Delia Arts Center provides the necessary building blocks to make this long-term goal a reality.