Cairo’s streets overflow with art, culture, and talent. While walking down its streets, you can pass an art exhibition without knowing it is there. The art in Cairo is a hidden gem. There is an entire universe of art and culture waiting to be unearthed. Fortunately, AlaFein is making the Cairo art scene accessible to the masses.
What is AlaFein?
AlaFein is a passion project made by arts and culture lovers to arts and culture lovers. The inspiration behind the platform came from a real-life problem that the founder, Ahmed Ashmawy, faced. They used an Instagram account to follow a few Instagram pages to keep up with events occurring in the arts and culture scene. In doing so, they realized they could view a small percentage of the events happening, based on the niche pages they were following. “Alfein is a comprehensive directory that showcases all of the art and culture-related events, that is for now focusing on Cairo but eventually expanding.”, stated Amina Onsy, Operations Manager.
With more than 3800+ events covered since their soft launch in April, AlaFein is a fun, young, and friendly platform. Onsy mentioned finding the correct name for their project, “We sat down and thought that with our platform, we wanted people to know where to go, hence the name AlaFein.” With many events occurring in Cairo, Ashmawy grasped the amount of untapped talent and emerging artists who lacked a platform to advertise their work. So, they created AlaFein, a place for artists to share their work and for the public to know about the art scene in Cairo free of charge. They offer all their content in both Arabic and English. Being a bilingual platform, they can diversify and reach a larger audience.
Bridging The Gap:
Their journey began with creating a database of all the event planners, organizers, and venues. “This does not exist in any place else in Cairo because we lack a lot of research and documentation of these places”, Onsy stated. She added, “Our Number one priority is to be inclusive” which is why they use their platform to amplify a diverse number of events. It ranges from concerts, plays, art exhibitions, and many more.
Dunia El Gabrouni, Data Collection and Community Engagement Officer explained, “We go through our database weekly and look up the places on the list and gather all the information about the events”. As their ground presence grows, artists and venues have started reaching out to them to utilize their platform. One of the challenges she faces is that many venues do not have a social media presence. The only people who know about them are the people who have been going for years. “This is exactly our goal, which is to reach these people or venues that are not easily reachable. We want to make them accessible to everyone”, stated El Gabrouni.
Onsy and El Gabrouni teased an exciting upcoming project, an application launching in February of 2024. The app will have many different features that will enrich the lives of artists and art lovers.
