Liverpool Arab Arts Festival (LAAF), the U.K.’s biggest annual celebration of Arab arts and culture, returns to venues across the city from 8th to 16th July 2017.

Organisers have now announced the first wave of nationally and internationally celebrated artists and performers coming together for what organisers describe as the festival’s “most vital edition to date”.

The diverse programme embraces both brand new work and the return of festival favourites, including an ambitious installation by an American-Iraqi artist, a performance in Sefton Park’s iconic Palm House by a Sudanese singer-songwriter, an “armed resistance fighter turned artist”, a one-woman show about Somalia and the violence of empire, and the recreation of a Tunisian streetscape in Liverpool.