Who we are
Gudran Association for Art and Development is a gathering of visual artists, writers, photographers, movies makers, dramatists and musicians. We are motivated by what we can call," the sense of artist's social responsibility" to abandon the traditional spaces of exhibiting and performance, to activate our artistic practice in the street with all its variables and to have more contact with all categories of the society. We aim to support a positive social transformation through an artistic practice that develops the mechanisms of contemporary arts to go out of the state of stagnancy surrounding them and to involve more members of the society in the artistic process.

The Beginning
Gudran began its work, as an artistic initiative explores using art as an introduction to development, in 2000. That was in the Village of Fishermen in El Max, west of Alexandria, Egypt. Then in April 2003, Gudran was registered, according to the Egyptian law, as a non -profit NGO. Gudran was founded in an artistic reality where most artists tended to avoid being in contact with the society, isolating themselves in the traditional halls of art. Meanwhile, the members of the society had gradually quitted any social participation and were quite submerged by the process of making a living. So, the artistic process became an elite practice, away from the sense of the street. On another hand, Gudran launched its efforts in a time when superstitious and irrational ideas had spread all over the society. Those ideas had diffused a mood of despair among people. Moreover, the propagandists and supporters of such ideas became the only active power in the street. Consequently, people lost their faith in the use of change and lacked the desire to participate in any social or cultural activities that aspire to realize a social transformation.

In such an environment, Gudran came out as an artistic initiative that does not see the members of the society as only an audience or receivers; but as possible creators who can participate in producing the artistic moment. Thus, Gudran aims to support the ability of the society to make a positive transformation by activating the energy of imagination in its members, creating an aesthetic social environment and encouraging people to be opened to new ideas that come out of meditating their own problems and proceeding to solve them within their social system, with a mechanism that combines both learning and producing art.

Gudran works as well on encouraging contemporary artists and giving them opportunities to develop their artistic practices and projects within the Egyptian society in order to have a stronger connection between contemporary arts and the society. Besides, Gudran works also as a communication bridge between contemporary Egyptian artists and international artistic spaces and artists