Today is a big day for Beirut: Creative Dialogues is back. From 9 to 11 October, the event returns for its third and largest edition in the city, this time stretching beyond its usual territory to bring craftsmanship, community, sustainability and film into the conversation.

And it really has grown: 55 speakers, 13 discussion topics, 18 workshops, six performances and five short films. Trying to cover all of that in one article would be a terrible idea — the worst thing I could do is throw every piece of information I have at you and pray you make it at least halfway through. So my approach is this: we are starting with one small but important part of the programme — three specially curated exhibitions, Luminous Threads, After Use: Trash Matters and The Path She Chose. And once you arrive to see them, who knows where the rest of Creative Dialogues will take you?

Ahead of the opening, we spoke to the curators of all three about what you will actually see, the stories behind the works and the details worth paying attention to once you are there.

It all began in Beirut in 2023 with a rather simple idea: the MENA region is bursting with artists, designers, filmmakers, architects, musicians and other creative minds, yet too often each stays politely within their own discipline. So Creative Dialogues was born to knock down those walls: a space where these worlds could meet, swap ideas and, ideally, create something entirely new together.

Three years on, that original idea has grown into a much bigger question: once you bring all these creative worlds together, what can they actually change? That is where this year's theme, Culture by Design: Creativity for Impact, comes in. Admittedly, it sounds rather broad. But behind it is a much more practical idea: looking at creativity not only as something we make or admire, but as something that can respond to people's needs, turn ideas into tangible solutions and keep cultural traditions relevant rather than simply preserving them in the past.

To make that idea easier to navigate, the organisers have divided the three days into three different focuses. Day one, Empathy by Design, looks at how creative work can respond to real human needs and experiences. Day two, Design in Practice, moves from ideas to making — how design, craft and materials can become something tangible. Day three, Culture Over Time, turns to heritage: what we preserve, what we reinvent and how traditional practices can continue to have a place in contemporary culture.

The programme approaches those ideas from all sorts of directions, with public talks and roundtables bringing together voices from art, design and beyond; hands-on workshops spanning ceramics, theatre, sustainability and archiving; performances; and five Lebanese short films, followed by a talk with the directors.

Perhaps the clearest way to see Creativity for Impact in action — and the one we are focusing on here — is through three exhibitions exploring heritage, sustainability and personal stories. All three are open to everyone, with advance registration encouraged.

One thing to keep in mind: the exhibitions are spread across different locations in the city, so make sure you double-check the address before hopping into a taxi.

Opening date: October, 9

Location: Beit Kanz

Luminous Threads takes us to Baalbek, an ancient city in eastern Lebanon, and into the world of Tarq, a centuries-old embroidery technique that works with a rather unexpected material. Where most of us would imagine embroidery as a matter of needle and thread, Tarq is made from fine, flat strips of metal, which are folded and pressed by hand, stitch by stitch, until they build a geometric surface that catches the light.

Remarkably, for a craft with such a long history, very little of it has ever been written down. So before building the exhibition, curator Yasmine Dabbous and research lead Valeria Zubieta Lupo had some detective work to do. The team dug through nineteenth-century newspapers, archives and historical objects, and spoke to the women in Baalbek who still know the technique.

And that conversation changed the story the team expected to tell. Rather than a craft on the verge of disappearing, they found around 40 women in Baalbek who still practise Tarq, along with a wider circle of daughters, aunts and neighbours who recognise the stitches and could pick them up themselves. The question therefore shifted from how to preserve the last traces of Tarq to how to give this living tradition a future.

And that is exactly what Luminous Threads sets out to do. At its heart is a new large-scale installation made entirely in Tarq by the women of Baalbek. Around it sit historical pieces from the 1930s, along with archival research and oral histories, all shown to the public for the first time.

Opening date: October, 10

Location: EcoHub & Ahla Fawda Studio

After Use: Trash Matters is one of those exhibitions where the big idea is hiding in plain sight, right there in the title: waste doesn't have to be the end of a material's life. Sometimes, it is the start of an entirely new design process. And that is exactly the shift the organisers want us to consider. Forget the usual routine of coming up with a concept and then hunting for the right materials to bring it to life. Here, everything begins with something someone else has already thrown away, and the question is simply: what could it become next?

Developed in collaboration with several organisations, including ALBA, the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, the exhibition puts the next generation of designers in the spotlight, showing how they are learning to work with limited resources and to find creative possibilities in what others might dismiss as useless.

Spread across two locations in Beirut, EcoHub and Ahla Fawda Studio, it explores three different ways of giving discarded materials a second life.

First comes recycling, where used glass and plastic are collected, processed and turned back into raw material, bringing students together with craftspeople and industry professionals. Then there is upcycling, where rather than breaking materials down, designers work with what is already there, from old objects to leftover pieces and discarded fragments, and transform them into something new while keeping traces of their previous lives. And finally, things get a little more experimental with biomaterials. Here, students explore how organic waste and biological processes can be used to develop entirely new materials. Think palm leaves, wood veneer and even SCOBY, the living culture of bacteria and yeast best known for making kombucha.

Opening date: October, 10

Location: Arthaus

The final exhibition on our list, The Path She Chose, is by no means the least important. Quite the opposite, in fact. At its heart are the stories of 24 women who, at some point in their lives, decided to change direction, start over or redefine who they were.

To tell those stories, students at Majal Design School turned them into works of art, and not through just one medium. Embroidery, beading, weaving and collage each offer a different way of capturing a personal journey, from the delicate to the layered to the deliberately unfinished.

Look closely, though, and you will notice that most of these techniques share something: they are made with fabric and thread, and that is far from accidental. Historically, working with cloth has been closely tied to women's lives, domestic traditions and the passing down of knowledge from one generation to the next. For a long time, it was seen more as craft than as artistic expression. Here, that changes. Techniques once associated with women's handiwork become the very means by which these women tell their own stories, in their own way.

And while the Beirut exhibition comes to an end on 11 October, the stories won't stop there. The Path She Chose travels to Saudi Arabia next, where it will be presented at Ithra, the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture, as part of Ithra Design Week, from 16 to 21 November 2026.