Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival is Egypt’s first international multi-disciplinary contemporary arts festival.

After a two-year hiatus, Cairo’s Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (D-CAF) has returned to the stage. The festival which kick-started on October 1, is Egypt’s first international multi-disciplinary contemporary arts festival and takes place over three weeks in October of each year.

The event that began in 2011, had to be postponed after Egypt was swept up in a massive revolution that year. As a result of the pandemic, D-CAF was cancelled in 2020, but it is returning for the ninth edition which will go on till October 22, 2021.

The festival showcases revolutionary work in the fields of music, theatre, dance, visual arts, literature, and film by cutting-edge artists from Egypt, the Arab world, and beyond.

This year too, over 50 artists from around the world will fly in to showcase their work across multiple disciplines, like puppetry and poetry, rap and trap, or techno and traditional eastern strings along with accessible talks, workshops, performances, exhibitions, and virtual reality experiences.

The ongoing festival will take place across 10 venues around historically significant areas of the city. Apart from these venues, D-CAF is also making use of Downtown’s distinct urban environment, pulling in non-traditional sites such as storefronts, alleyways, rooftops, and other street-side locations, so that participants can engage with the neighbourhood and its artwork in new and creative ways.

One of the highlights this year is the New Media Arts program is the VR experience which will be shown at Violette Rooftop House. D-CAF has curated an exciting introduction to virtual reality with six different VR headsets that audiences can use to watch different films, play games, and participate in educational activities.

This year, the event will focus on climate change, with a series of workshops and talks curated to help artists and cultural practitioners steer new ways of creating art that is both sustainable and responsive to the current COVID-19 crisis.