ESHBAL: I have a very specific perspective. When I moved back to Haifa, I was looking to continue the music and theory courses I previously conducted in Tel Aviv. I spoke with Rotem from Makom Le Shira, a school for prose and poetry based in Jerusalem, which had recently started a branch in Haifa. Realising our shared goals for the arts in Haifa, we established the Haifa Forum for Arts and Culture. We engaged local cultural establishment leaders to lobby for funding from the city and government. During this time, Mayor Kalish was forming a strategic team of consultants. I applied and was accepted as a consultant to the mayor on cultural matters. This happened during Covid when many artists were moving to Haifa, countering the trend of people leaving. My goal was to establish infrastructure to mirror the support seen in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Unfortunately, due to political conflicts, many of my recommendations remained unimplemented. The city’s financial support for the arts is minimal, barely making an impact. The city itself faced a lot of political conflict, so most of my recommendations were just left as recommendations. I want people to make a living here respectfully. To achieve this, more budget is necessary so people can have stable jobs, not just in art projects but in museums and supported nonprofits. On the other hand, the situation in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem has become somewhat static, with ample funding leading to complacency. In Haifa, the lack of substantial funding keeps the arts scene authentic and dynamic. 

ESHBAL: There needs to be tension. And I always say that I think there's something very healthy about artists that have a day job. We want a balance. 

ESHBAL: Specifically, in a very positive way. Haifa is the only place in Israel that I think is really inherently multicultural. I grew up here, being exposed to different cultures, and also during a wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union (I was born in ‘86. I got back to Israel in 1991 during the immigration wave. My parents were emissaries abroad). A few years ago while living and working around Tel Aviv, The main thing I remember is seeing people that made a living out of art. And for me in my mentality, it wasn't an option. I'm like a 10th generation educator or teacher or whatever. So I didn't even know that it's a possibility. I thought I could either become, I don’t know, as famous as Korn, Iron Maiden, or whatever, or a failure. A Fight Club mentality is what I call it in my head. The current immigrants from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Russia, Ukraine, etc. have expectations of both making art and living a comfortable life, and that’s a very important mentality.

UNHiNGED: The feeling I've gotten, both in Tel Aviv and in Haifa, was that in this immigration it's more people trying to rebuild the lives that they had previously and not necessarily trying to start again. ESHBAL: Not looking to be the classic immigrant that's working their way up and not knowing the language. They know English. The ideals are different, and they have what I call expectations. They want to live well. That's what I see. Just like the local population, Arabs, Jews, whatever. We obviously all want the same things, when you zoom out, and in Haifa I think folk can see it more clearly. There's a balance. This city is very different than any other place because, Haifa is very old (in different variations) and there's a  culture here that was built and lived before the Jewish immigration,  and I feel as though Palestinian culture has more place to be expressed in Haifa, or at at least I can say that I feel it has an effect on me and my peers. It feels very different because we live here. Masada Street, the coffee shops, a lot of them in Hillel are Arab owned. We know what it feels like to be in a space in which we’re not the majority. It's a very good thing for a person. I think we're very affected by the culture here, the architecture. If you go to the French Carmel; the houses there; A lot of them were built for Arab families by Jewish architects who studied at the Bauhaus. That's Haifa. I can’t say, there's total peace and equality, etc. But we aspire to live together and influence each other to some extent. 

ESHBAL: First things first, it's really fun. Everything is going on and new things happen every week. More places are popping up. In terms of community, People just want to help here. People are nice. People are more "Canadian" than in Tel Aviv. You can say people want to help you. We know that the places we sit at just to hang, like HaKeren and all that stuff like that, we also DJ there. We help paint the walls. We build our downtime by ourselves. 

ESHBAL: I think the quality of life. And it might be that I'm a very romantic person, the way I look at things. Just the fact that you have a view, literally, that you can be bombed, you can hate work, you can whatever. Then you get out of your house. I think it gives you, we say in Hebrew "proportions". It puts everything in perspective. It's a huge thing. And I'm saying that because I don't know if financially things are going to dramatically change here, the rent is going up. We lack cultural and communal infrastructure. But right now, the quality of life and the fact that we have, “Yalla Bo'' (“I’m down, let’s do it!”) mentality, if you talk with people and you have an idea and it's a good idea, then it'll take you two seconds to have more people on board. In my experience, in Tel Aviv people will always say "I don't know what my schedule is" , "a big project is coming my way", "the grant is around the corner", or anything else. Dude, I just want to jam. Here, I saw a friend in a coffee place, and he was renting time in my studio, and he told me, "oh, I'm just playing with Dean, you want to come over?" They were looking for a vocalist, and it kind of happened and now I'm singing in their band. 

I do think we should expect and demand better trains to Tel Aviv and stuff like that on Friday, Saturday. Because we should be able to move around easily. And the topography is very different, the same thing that gives you this scope for imagination and ability to see. is the same thing that doesn't exist in Tel Aviv, which is that it’s flat, you have a million people on the same surface. Here, we have 300,000 people separated. So it gives you peace of mind. and it's very easy to move around here by car and on the Carmelit, access to public transportation. I usually walk everywhere. So the same things that we lack are some of the strengths. Some of this potential, we want to stay as a potential, and not become too institutionalised. 

ESHBAL: Yeah. We might or might not have control. So I think the most unique things, if I want to answer the question, are the quality of life, the people and the fact that we have multiple cultures here and a real sense of community and wanting to build a life.

ESHBAL: You can see I'm a teacher by my answer: do what you love and do it because you love it. Don't expect anyone to see the value in what you do. You can hope, but don't expect, try and better yourself if things don't work. Try and get feedback. Try to see if other people have succeeded in what you do, and if other people have failed at what you want to do. Help others, from a real authentic place. If you don't like helping other people and working with other people, you're not on the right path because it's a communal thing. Ask around, talk, be a part of whatever's going on. Whatever you’re trying to do will work if you have a passion for it and if you adjust yourself. You know, if you're an artist, you're probably struggling with something and art gets you out of the house. If you say to yourself, okay, for example:“I'm a musician. There's a show in Shukri tonight. I don't want to leave the house. I just want to go play Zelda or whatever. But I feel like I need to do it because they want to get my connections.” And then you have these thoughts—they'll take you out of the house, and then you’ll just be happy that you're outside. So our goals can be big and grandiose, but I would suggest remembering where it comes from, from that impulse, and also be aware of the fact that making art, for a lot of us, is a social communal thing, brought out through self expression.