According to Kanoon General Directorate for Public Relations and International Affairs, this event was supposed to be held in May 2020 in Helsingborg for which Hojat Zeinali was selected out of the applicants as Iran’s delegate but this event was postponed to May 2022 due to the pandemic.

ASSITEJ National Center, ASSITEJ delegate (ASSITEJ, the International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People) has published another call, reviewed documents of the applicants to participate in this event with the cooperation of Minoush Rahimian, member of board of directors of International ASSITEJ and seven people who have the qualifications to attend the event were introduced to the secretariat of this event. At the end, Hojat Zeinali was accepted to attend this event for the second time.

Based on Kanoon announcement, in this round of the event, Minoush Rahimian from Iran, Bebe de Soares from Brazil, and Ernie Nolan from United States who are members of international ASSITEJ board of directors form the jury for the event. They selected 16 young artists from all over the world out of 269 applicants who are professionally working in the field of theater for children and adolescents not older than 36 to participate in this program.

Next Generation Project is an exciting and progressive innovation by International ASSITEJ welcomed by new figures and supported by young artists to promote the international relationships in the area of theater.

This event is a planned project to support artistic and cultural networks, exchanging and cooperation among artists in festivals and other international programs through a special event. In this event, participants can discuss various artistic methods, exchange experiment and relate to artists from all over the world.

In addition, participating in workshops with the presence of international artists and holding discussion sessions are other programs of this project.

This project is supposed to be held in Helsingborg, Sweden from May 17 to 22, 2022.  ASSITEJ in Sweden and Bibu Festival are to pay the expenses of the participants for six nights including all the expenses of registration, theater tickets, seminars, participating in workshops, and food.

Hojat Zeinali is an author, director, theater actor, drama instructor and storytelling for children, educated in Puppet Theater at University of Tehran, College of Fine Arts.