Make it Heard

On creativity as resistance — and why making something from where you come from is never entirely innocent

There is a word Raja was initially hesitant to use in this episode. 

The word is resistance. 

Not the confrontational kind — not the kind that announces itself. The quieter kind: the insistence on being seen, on telling your own story rather than having it told for you, the daily decision to make something from where you come from, knowing that in the current climate that act carries weight whether you intend it to or not.

None of the guests in this episode frame their work as resistance. A supper club, a jewellery collection, a gallery, an online radio station, a sound art practice, a restaurant. None of them look the same. All of them function as exactly that — evidence of a culture that is richer and more complex than prevailing narratives tend to allow.

The episode's central argument: when you argue with the wrong story, you feed it. When you replace it — when you produce something so true and so full of life that the wrong story becomes less credible without you ever engaging it — that is how the narrative actually shifts.

Voices in this episode

Radio Alhara  —  Palestinian online radio station founded during COVID
Ahmad Halawa  —  Palestinian chef and founder of Ysupper clubs in Dubai.
Nadine Kanso  —  Lebanese jewellery designer and founder of Bil Arabi.
Amrita Sethi  —  Sound artist and founder of Soundbite.
Sunny Rahbar  —  Co-founder of The Third Line gallery in Dubai.
Basil Yassin  —  Founder of Yava restaurant in Dubai.
Omar Al-Gurk  —  Emirati designer and founder of Modu Method.

Chapters
 
00:53  Intro 
03:08  Radio Alhara 
05:20  Ahmad Halawa on his supper clubs
06:46  Nadine Kanso on September 11th as the trigger
07:29  Raja on the broader principle
09:24  Amrita Sethi on pioneering a form that had no precedent
11:39  Sunny Rahbar on coming back
12:39  Basil Yassin 
14:13  Omar Al-Gurk on the 1960s and 70s
14:43  Closing argument