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Port Sudan, Sudan – Awad Haroun, 45, a visual artist and theatre director, fled his home in Al-Halfaya, Khartoum North, after war destroyed a life he had worked hard to build in the capital.

He moved to Port Sudan with his wife and son, leaving behind his home, artistic workspace and the tools he needed to work, shortly after fighting erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary in April 2023.

When he fled, he carried little: Two shirts, two pairs of trousers, two books and a few torn drawing papers, expecting to return soon. Instead, he has been forced to rebuild his life far from home.

He lost not only his home but also the tools and materials he relied on to work and make a living.

In Port Sudan, he looked to use his skills in sculpture, design and decoration for some money. He has since participated in theatrical performances at Wasel Festival, organised by Ahalina Cultural Group in partnership with UNESCO, and led traditional arts workshops with cultural groups.

Awad founded Ahalina cultural group in 2013 with a group of young people, using theatre, visual arts, music and puppetry to engage with young people and promote peace and social cohesion.

Drawing, storytelling, music and play have also given children opportunities to express themselves and connect with others.

“Losing my tools does not mean I have lost my skills, and losing my workspace does not mean I have lost my ability to create,” Awad told Al Jazeera.

Awad and other displaced artists found shelter at an old school in Port Sudan, where they helped clean and prepare the building for families forced from their homes.

“Now, concerns about the possibility of eviction have left us uncertain about where we will go next,” he said.

While art cannot replace a lost home or end the war, Awad believes it can preserve memories, bring communities together and offer children space to play and express themselves.

“From the ashes, we will rise” is the motto of Ahalina cultural group. This is more than a slogan for Awad; it is a reminder to keep creating, despite everything the war has taken from him.

The war has taken a heavy toll on Sudan’s cultural life, damaging heritage sites and disrupting the livelihoods of artists across the country.

In June 2026, UNESCO estimated that Sudan’s cultural sector faced a $30m funding gap. But behind this figure are deeply personal losses: Artists killed by the war or forced to leave behind studios, galleries, artworks and the tools they need to create.

In April 2024, UNESCO reported that the Artists and Writers Union in Port Sudan had provided shelter to more than 112 displaced artists and other cultural professionals.

The challenges remain significant, but cultural initiatives have continued. In April 2026, UNESCO said its initiatives in Port Sudan had benefitted more than 350 artists, women, girls and internally displaced cultural professionals, supporting efforts to sustain Sudan’s cultural life amid the conflict.

Asim Abdelaziz, 31, a musician and filmmaker, left El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, amid escalating fighting and repeated drone attacks. He arrived in Port Sudan in November 2023, hoping to find safety and work.

Separated from his family, who are scattered between Omdurman and El Obeid, Asim lives alone in a shelter for displaced artists. The war has uprooted his life and disrupted his career, but he continues to use music to preserve Sudan’s cultural heritage and bring communities together.

In Port Sudan, he has worked with the local Artists and Writers Union, UNESCO and community organisations.  He has also collaborated with the Ministry of Culture and Information and other artists on music programmes to address social issues, including hate speech and racism.

Asim said the war has spurred hate speech and deepened divisions between Sudan’s different communities. He believes art can counter these differences by promoting diversity, mutual acceptance and peaceful coexistence.

“I have seen firsthand how hate speech affects people’s lives,” Asim told Al Jazeera. “Through music, I try to remind Sudanese people that we are all brothers and sisters, and that war does not represent who we are.”

Mokhalaya, a project he founded to document and archive traditional music and rhythms from across the country a year ago, is one avenue for this.

“I hope to take the project to international festivals, introducing audiences abroad to [showcase] Sudan’s rich musical traditions and cultural diversity,” he said.

Preserving heritage is not just about safeguarding the past, but also about keeping Sudan’s cultural identity alive during a war that has displaced communities and disrupted lives, he said.

Abdelqader Hashem, secretary of the Red Sea State Writers and Artists Union, told Al Jazeera the union has supported artists and their families who fled fighting in other parts of Sudan since the war began on April 15, 2023.

“We worked to establish a shelter for displaced artists in a school in Port Sudan and sought support from local and international organisations to provide for their basic needs,” he said.

Beyond providing shelter, the union has helped displaced artists take part in the city’s cultural activities, contributing to community awareness programmes that address important societal issues such as the dangers of drug use, a growing concern in Sudan.

“We have also implemented projects in partnership with UNESCO to train children in displacement camps in handicrafts, including concrete crafts,” Hashem said.

“Most of the displaced artists have since returned to their homes in Khartoum following the Sudanese army’s recapture of the capital.”

The heart of Screenland is cozying up to artificial intelligence.

The open space in Culver Steps typically hosts community events and movie nights. But on Wednesday, it turned into a job fair for companies looking to hire talent for AI studios.

Companies showed off their life-like AI videos, urging emerging talent — and out-of-work creatives — to join them as they worked to reinvent traditional filmmaking.

“It’s a great breeding ground for this new filmmaking,” Dave Clark, cofounder of AI film production studio Promise, said about Culver City. “To the independent filmmakers here, it’s time to take back power.”

The event was part of LA Tech Week, a citywide event organized by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Culver City is already home to big names in Hollywood and technology like Amazon MGM Studios, TikTok, Apple, and Sony Pictures Entertainment. Recently, a growing cluster of AI studios, including Promise, TrueShort, Native Foreign, and PhantomX, are expanding in the neighborhood.

Luma AI, a $4-billion Palo Alto startup that makes generative AI video software, opened a facility in Culver City last year. The company’s Dream Lab occupies a 7,000 square feet space and employs a team of 13.

“Culver City is the future of AI and filmmaking,” Caroline Ingeborn, Luma AI’s chief operating officer, said in a statement.

The companies said they are drawn by the legacy studios they hope to rival. The fact that space is available and affordable thanks to the general decline of the entertainment business in L.A. also helps.

Proponents of AI see it as an antidote to high production costs and say it allows creatives to make films that otherwise would never be made. However, many in Hollywood, its unions, and the public at large are suspicious of the surge in AI use, worried it is stealing the work of human creatives and taking people’s jobs.

The new wave of AI filmmakers have accepted the rise of AI as inevitable, and are forging ahead, increasingly in Culver City.

The city is not opposed to it.

“We’re a hub for the creative economy that is continuing to evolve,” said Adam Troy, Culver City assistant city manager, in a statement. “We look forward to what’s next in the space and what businesses see their future here in Culver City.”

TrueShort moved into Culver City last month, taking over most of a 5,000-square-foot office space near Amazon’s studio. The AI studio has raised $17 million and employs about 45 people. Around 75% of them are creatives: filmmakers, editors, sound designers and composers.

Its streaming app hosts short-form true crime audio and video shows that are fully AI-generated. On average, a 10-minute episode costs about $10,000 to make and takes about 10 days to go from idea to release.

“The next Netflix or the next Disney is going to come out of AI this time,” said Nate Tepper, cofounder of TrueShort. “And, in a way, it kind of needs to be a startup because the big incumbents are not going to move as fast. They’re going to be afraid of backlash.”

The company outgrew its Santa Monica office and is now located near Culver Theater.

“It is cool being next to the other bigger lots like Sony and Amazon, only because it’s inspiring,” Tepper said. “We want the lot. We want to become the big studio.”

Culver City-based creative studio Native Foreign makes AI commercials for brands that are more open than Hollywood about AI use. It has done ads for Virgin and Toys R Us.

It made one of the first AI-animated shorts, “Critterz,” using OpenAI’s software and planned to help make a movie based on it, but OpenAI pulled out of the project and canceled its video-making AI model.

“We don’t have the kind of opportunities that maybe some huge huge studios and companies have, so we are able to bag above our weight with these tools,” Nik Kleverov, co-founder of the company, said on a panel at LA Tech Week.

Google-backed Promise is another Culver City-adjacent AI studio that’s a proponent of hybrid productions, where human actors work with AI specialists. The company uses AI to generate backgrounds, visual effects, and synthetic humans for its slate of films, but a lot of the performances are shot on soundstages across L.A. using actors.

In late 2024, the studio acquired Curious Refuge, an online AI school that teaches traditional artists and newbies to use generative AI tools for filmmaking. Promise moved close to Culver from Venice in June.

Excitement about AI grows even as the industry puts up guardrails to contain it. The actors’ guild SAG-AFTRA has secured special protection against fully synthetic performers in the union contract signed this year.

However, some Hollywood veterans point out that the industry has fought over technology before. Alex Cancado, who spent years in visual effects and has worked on over 80 movies, now works in the AI Studios division of Amazon MGM Studios.

Pitching the crowd of creatives on Wednesday, he said the transition from practical effects to computer graphics was equally fraught.

“It was a challenge getting CG to be accepted by directors and producers,” Cancado said.

Much of the buzz around AI use for big productions started with a conference in Culver City called “AI on the Lot,” which started in 2023. It has since grown to thousands of attendees.

The organization also sponsored the job fair on Culver Steps and a networking happy hour for media AI companies in Culver City. It estimates that AI media companies with $2 billion in backing have converged on the city.

Mike Gioia, a founder of AI on the Lot, attends City Hall meetings and is trying to build momentum around the concept of a “Culver cluster” — bringing more companies and individuals working in AI to the neighborhood.

“We want to make Culver City the capital of AI media,” said Gioia.