Alia Alzougbi

Alia is the artistic director and CEO of Shubbak, in London, Europe's largest festival of contemporary Arab and SWANA arts. She is also a cultural strategist, independent curator, and accredited coach and facilitator working at the intersection of art, social justice, and environmental care. Her practice is internationally recognized as a forager of critical encounters towards collective liberation with projects spanning local corner shops to world-renowned museums. As a creative practitioner, Alia uses the arts to interrogate the root causes of inequality, imagine alternative presents, and rehearse possible futures. A self-described professional dreamer, Alia is passionate about imagination as both strategy and survival — and as the crucial first step in building the world we all deserve. She is a descendant of a clan that transcends the colonial borders imposed by the Sykes–Picot Agreement and continues to live across Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. Alia is a Chevening Scholar, a Clore Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a 2026 ISPA Global Fellow and a Salzburg Global Fellow.