CULTURUNNERS produces cross-cultural campaigns, exhibitions and journeys - promoting peace-building & sustainable development through art. Launching at MIT in 2014, CULTURUNNERS' first project was a multi-year artists' road-trip broadcasting between the United States and the Middle East. It has since grown to encompass large-scale cultural exchange and diplomacy projects, an artist-led media platform, artists' spaces, and partnerships with institutions around the world.
In the fall of 2014, a group of international artists, film-makers, scientists and journalists gathered at MIT to discuss alternative lines of communication between the Middle East and United States
In the fall of 2014, a group of international artists, film-makers, scientists
and journalists gathered at MIT to discuss alternative lines of communication
between the Middle East and United States. Believing in the power of traveling
artists to connect communities and inspire greater empathy across ideological
and geographical borders, the idea of CULTURUNNERS was born.
As its first project, CULTURUNNERS embarked on a multiyear artists’ road trip criss-crossing between the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region and the United States. With the aim of producing meaningful counter narratives, the collective transformed a 34ft 1999 Gulf Stream RV into a mobile artists studio and broadcast vehicle, and set out across North America; along the way hosting exhibitions, talks and workshops, while creating mobile dispatches for CULTURUNNERS interactive website and partner media platforms.
In 2023, CULTURUNNERS became a founding partner of the Jameel Arts & Health Lab along with the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe, the Steinhardt School at New York University, and Community Jameel. Established to measurably improve health and wellbeing through the arts, it is the first major initiative of its kind to be supported by WHO.
