Nuqat: Connecting the Dots through Creative Empowerment

Nuqat, which means dots in Arabic, is a Kuwait-based collective on a mission to bring creative education and empowerment to the Arab audience through workshops and activities. With an aim to provide a platform for Arab creatives, the cultural initiative has now grown into one of the biggest creative conferences in the region. Arabad reached out to Nuqat’s co-founder Wakim Zeidan for a comprehensive roundup of its innovative structure, sustained expansion and regional impact.

How did this project first come to being and in what ways does it relate to Kuwait's cultural heritage?

Nuqat was founded by four people: Wakim Zeidan, Hussa Al Humaidhi, Sara Al Nafisi and Dana Al Hilal. The project started out of frustration with the lack of creative development in the Arab World. Bound by a single vision to clear out this frustration, the founders came together to do something about it – hence the birth of Nuqat in 2009. Nuqat’s uniqueness goes back to a combination of many

factors: educational content that is relevant to the Arab audience, high standards of event management, speakers of Arab origin (although in some cases non-arabs are invited, priority has always been for Arab speakers) and the fact that Nuqat is fully executed by an Arab team from different Arab nationalities and backgrounds. We plan to expand Nuqat in the near future, but at this stage our main focus is on Kuwaiti audiences to deliver the high-standard creative education that we are committed to.

Most of the creative entities in the region tap into art from a commercial angle, while Nuqat draws on it from a purely educational perspective.