Samar’s testimonial explores home, memory, resilience and Palestinian identity.
Beiti is a multidisciplinary creative project led by Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre and conceived and created by Samar Haddad King. First piloted in Jerusalem, the project explores personal journeys of transformation through movement, creative writing, storytelling, community building, and filmmaking.
Rooted in the uniqueness of the individual within the shared fabric of the human experience, the programme empowers participants to create original short films that reflect their own stories while fostering creativity, connection, and artistic expression.
Reimagining the Meaning of Home
For me, Beiti grew out of a question that has stayed with me for a long time: What is home when the physical place itself is constantly under threat, has been taken from you, or no longer exists? For Palestinians, home has always carried a particular weight, whether we are living in Palestine or scattered across the world. Because so much has been stolen from us—our land, our homes, and our freedom of movement—the idea of home has become deeply embedded in our collective memory and national story.
Every Palestinian family carries its own story of home, loss, survival, and belonging. Over the past few years, we've witnessed devastating destruction across Palestine. In Gaza, entire neighbourhoods have been erased. Across the West Bank and Jerusalem, homes continue to be demolished, families displaced, and communities threatened. These are not only attacks on buildings—they are attacks on memory, continuity, and belonging. Because of this reality, I wanted Beiti to explore home in a more expansive way. Beyond the physical home, I wanted to ask:
Home Beyond Place
For Palestinians, especially those living in exile, home often exists as both memory and inheritance. It lives in stories, photographs, language, food, art, and in the ways, we continue to care for one another across borders and generations. Beiti is not only about remembering the past—it is about creating an archive for the future.
It was important to me that Beiti begin in Jerusalem. It is our capital, the city where my grandmother grew up, and where one of the last homes my family once owned still stands, even though it was taken from us. Through storytelling, movement, writing, conversation, and film, Beiti creates a space where participants can reflect on what home means, how it changes, and how it endures, preserving memory while creating new connections across generations.
Creating Space for Personal Stories
I hoped participants would leave feeling that their stories mattered.
Palestinians are often spoken about collectively, but every family and every individual has a different relationship to home. I wanted to create a space where people could slow down, reflect on those experiences, and discover what home means to them personally—not what it is supposed to mean, but what it actually means in their own lives. I also hoped participants would build confidence in telling their own stories. The goal wasn't to create professional artists, but to give people creative tools to express something deeply personal and to realise that their memories, perspectives, and voices are worth documenting.
Connection, Creativity and Resistance
I wanted participants to experience the generosity that comes from listening to one another. Although everyone's story was unique, there were moments where people recognised themselves in someone else's experience. By the end of the workshops, each participant had created a film, but what mattered just as much was the process of remembering, sharing, and realising that even ordinary memories—family rituals, neighbourhoods, smells, languages, or childhood moments—carry tremendous value.
Many participants also said they began to see their city differently, noticing places, details, and histories they had never really seen before. More importantly, they realised they didn't have to exist only in response to an oppressive system. Under occupation, so much of life can feel like constant reaction.
What was exciting was watching participants recognise that they could also initiate something—they could create, imagine, remember, and tell their own stories on their own terms. I hope they left with a deeper connection to themselves, to one another, and to the understanding that preserving these stories is itself an act of care and resistance.
