The Young Artist of the Year award is a biennial programme that supports and promotes young Palestinian artists. Initiated in 2000 by the A.M. Qattan Foundation under its Culture and Arts Programme (CAP), it has become the leading national competition for young visual arts practitioners in historical Palestine and its Diaspora. In 2006, it was renamed The Hassan Hourani Award in honour of a gifted young artist and one of the winners of the first Award in 2000, who died in a tragic drowning accident in 2003. The Award has played a significant role over its first decade in enabling new visual art practices and in opening up new spaces and opportunities for young Palestinian artists at the beginning of their careers. It has empowered young artists and provided them with a space in which to embark on increasingly ambitious projects and explore new ideas. It has also created better opportunities for dialogue and exchange between artists in Palestine and with their international colleagues, thus opening up hitherto unavailable avenues of professional development. The Award is open to Palestinian artists, regardless of their place of residence, between the ages of 22 and 30 who work in any area of the visual arts. Artists from the occupied Golan Heights are also eligible to submit an application in accordance with the application procedures and guidelines. An open call for applications is made locally and internationally. Applicants are asked to submit proposals for a work, or related group of works, that are to be made specifically for the Award and which have not previously been exhibited at any other time or at any other venue. Ten artists are shortlisted and given financial support and six months to develop and produce their proposed work, after which an exhibition is organised in the West Bank city of Ramallah. A panel of renowned and distinguished Palestinian and international artists, curators, commentators and professionals in the fields of culture and the visual arts are invited to spend a week in Palestine to meet the artists, view the exhibition and make a choice for the First, Second and Third Prize winners.