Heba el-Cheikh

Heba elCheikh is an outdoor performances producer, Steering committee member of Circostrada network, local Associate of NESTA Culture Entrepreneurship Programme in Egypt and a Clore Fellow 2016-2017. She studied French, translation and journalism and in 2012 she had her Masters degree in Arts Management, in focus on community arts and evaluation at Utrecht School of the Arts, the Netherlands. In 2011, she co-founded Mahatat for contemporary art. Believing in the democratization of the arts, the cultural manager aims to decentralize the arts making it available to everyone, through arts in public spaces and community arts projects. Her working experiences range from culture management, facilitation, interpreting and journalism (radio and print media) to website editing. In 2009, she co-founded The “Journey cultural Group” in Alexandria, aiming to promote youth creativity and critical thinking through culture and arts.

She is a published author, she published her first travel book in 2017 in Arabic, with Kotobna.net and in 2015, she published her thesis: Community Arts Evaluation Practices in Egypt, Lap Lambert Academic Publishing. Having travelled to Morocco, France, Spain, Kenya, Italy, England, Belgium, Germany, Syria, Indonesia, Thailand and the USA, ElCheikh published fieldwork-based articles in French and Arabic weeklies and magazines and covers arts and traveling, and tackles local community life style, culture and legacy.