AWAKEN is a community-building program developed by en.v in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, originally launched in 2018 as a series of festivals and public events. Through creativity and the creation of safe spaces, AWAKEN has been enabling people from different backgrounds and perspectives to connect, explore personal biases, and build bridges in order to pave the way towards a more resilient and inclusive society. In 2020, AWAKEN went online and launched Neighborhood Tales: Kuwait Under Lockdown, a community history project that documented the experiences of diverse individuals as they navigated COVID-19 and ensuing restrictions in Kuwait. One of the project’s priorities was to highlight the more invisible and unheard stories of the pandemic, with a focus on the communities that were being affected the most (e.g. frontline workers, people living in locked-down areas, people who lost their source of income). Through in-depth interviews and analysis, the project offers a comprehensive view of how 30 unique individuals dealt with the virus, the lockdown itself, institutional quarantine, food (in)security, as well as fluctuating social and spatial dynamics. 

After a lengthy transcribing, reviewing, translation and copy-writing process, all 30 stories were released on the Neighborhood Tales platform (in both English and Arabic). We are now working to engage a greater number of people in listening and reflecting on these multi-layered and varied experiences, beginning a discussion on the intersectional and structural factors that affect them, and the learnings we can extrapolate as we move forward. Since January, we have been hosting educational roadshows in schools and online exploration circles with a number of community partners (including The Divan, Kuwait University, American University of Kuwait, the American School of Kuwait, and Khaleejesque), and reaching out to media partners to increase our reach. Over the next few months, we will continue to engage diverse members of the community through a variety of creative and collaborative formats, as we move towards envisioning a stronger, more inclusive Kuwait.