Question of Funding (QOF) is a Palestinian-based collective of artists, cultural producers and community organisers who explore alternative methods of cultural support. Born of the necessity to address the significant challenges to cultural funding in their region, the collective questions existing models of support in order to generate effective solutions. By producing, documenting, accumulating and disseminating resources, experience and knowledge with their wider community, QOF aims to rethink the economy of funding and how it affects cultural production both in Palestine and the world. This work raises further issues concerning the political and economic role of cultural work within a broader social context.
Dayra is the result of QOF's collaborative, ever-evolving search for better means of harnessing the vast resources that are continually stifled by the harsh economic and political realities in Palestine. Dayra, which is Arabic for ‘circle’ and ‘circling’, is a model for re-evaluating the concept of value, starting with the premise that individuals, local organisations, cooperatives and associations, which have no funds to sustain their operations, do have an abundance of resources and knowledge of many kinds – material, physical and intellectual.
Dayra's system is based on ‘circles’ within communities, where an alternative economic model facilitates exchange based on trust within and between these ‘circles’, encouraging and connecting local production from diverse sectors such as agriculture, arts, culture and small creative businesses to foster social development and cohesion.
