FLYING CARPET FESTIVAL 2026
ARTIST LINEUP
Click on any image for artist’s biography
58 artists, local child artists, organizers, and volunteers from 22 countries
Every performer at the Flying Carpet Festival is meticulously hand-picked and interviewed to ensure they align with the festival's deep-rooted mission of hope and healing. This rigorous selection process goes beyond pure technical talent, focusing on finding world-class international artists who possess the empathy, adaptability, and heart required to work alongside the Circus Heroes. By personally interviewing each candidate, the festival ensures that every visiting artist is not just a performer, but a dedicated collaborator ready to foster meaningful cross-cultural connections and create a safe, inspiring environment for the children.
Performing ARTISTS
Circus Heroes
The Circus Heroes are the remarkable local child and youth artists who form the backbone and heartbeat of the Flying Carpet Festival and Sirkhane. Comprising a dedicated group of young Syrian, Iraqi, Kurdish, and Turkish performers, they originally entered the program as vulnerable children seeking refuge from the severe traumas of war, poverty, and displacement. Despite these immense challenges, they have emerged as true heroes and role models. Having grown up within the circus, these youth have transitioned from students into certified trainers, mentors, and the primary stars of Sirkhane’s mobile caravans. Today, they collaborate annually with international artists at the festival, using social circus pedagogy—including acrobatics, juggling, and clowning—as powerful tools for social change, psychological healing, and offering hope to the next generation of at-risk children in their communities.
MURAL ARTIST
Every time the Flying Carpet Children Festival arrives in a community, it ensures its vibrant message of hope outlasts its stay by leaving behind a stunning, permanent mural. To achieve this, the festival brings in world-class mural artists who work hand-in-hand with local youth to co-create striking visual narratives that align perfectly with the year’s main theme and story. These large-scale art installations do more than just beautify a physical space; they serve as a lasting testament to the children’s creativity, a mirror of their shared triumphs, and a colorful daily reminder that their stories matter long after the festival stage is packed away.
PRODUCTION ARTISTS
The backbone of the festival’s breathtaking aesthetic rests on its production artists—world-class visionaries who specialize in transforming spaces into immersive theatrical masterpieces. Each year, the Flying Carpet Festival selects a single narrative thread and elevates it into an awe-inspiring sensory experience. By seamlessly weaving together dynamic visual projection theater, sophisticated lighting design, live music, spellbinding circus arts, and expressive dance, these artists build beautiful, transformative stages that elevate local storytelling into a universal experience. This year, the Flying Carpet Festival turns its creative lens toward Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s timeless masterpiece, The Little Prince. Reimagined and adapted for this unique boundary-crossing stage by Aida Noshali and theater director Torange Yeghiazarian, the production transforms the classic novella into a vivid celebration of resilience and connection. Under their creative vision, the story's themes of childhood wonder and enduring hope are tailored directly to the festival's mission, breathing new life into the cosmic journey through a blend of physical theater, local narrative styles, and immersive artistry.
WORKSHOP ARTISTS
The curation of workshops for the Flying Carpet Children Festival is an incredibly intentional, trauma-informed process designed to bring radical joy and structural healing to vulnerable youth along the Turkish-Syrian border. Rather than introducing arbitrary arts and crafts, festival founders Sahba Aminikia and Pınar Demiral utilize a rigorous global open call and review system where international applicants must explicitly pitch their projects' educational outcomes, structural safety, and material needs. Every selected program—spanning music production, digital media, and social circus pedagogy—is hand-picked to ensure it actively builds tangible life skills like self-confidence, psychological resilience, and peaceful cross-cultural communication among Syrian, Turkish, and Kurdish children. By focusing heavily on a co-creation framework where world-class artists directly partner with local youth, these carefully vetted workshops transcend temporary entertainment; they provide marginalized children with practical narrative tools to process trauma, preserve their childhoods, and confidently articulate their own stories to the world.
LOCAL ARTISTS
At the core of the Flying Carpet Children Festival is a deep reverence for the rich cultural tapestry of the border region, driven by an active collaboration with local Turkish, Syrian, and Kurdish artists of immense talent. Rather than just bringing in outside perspectives, the festival acts as a collaborative ecosystem where world-class international creatives and local masters work side-by-side as equal partners. These regional musicians, visual storytellers, and educators possess a profound, lived understanding of the community’s heritage and the specific traumas the children carry, making their involvement vital for creating a safe, authentic space. By honoring local artistic traditions and giving these regional voices a global platform, Flying Carpet ensures that the festival's impact is deeply rooted, mutually inspiring, and sustainably woven into the very fabric of the community.
KITCHEN
