Following the artistic tour Mahatat for Contemporary Art in October, the collective is on the road again, this time fusing a Cairo band with local acts.

The tour will kick off this Thursday 11 December in the canal city of Port Said and will move to the Nile Delta with performances in Damietta and Mansoura before ending the tour in Cairo on Sunday 15 December.

Cairo's El-Mazzikateya – founded by two self-taught musicians, Ahmed Hayman and Khaled Senosi – will jam with local artists from each of the cities in public spaces.

Dubbed Art of Transit, the tours are Mahatat's way of bringing various forms of art to public spaces through street performances and artistic interventions.

Besides the October tour, Mahatat launched its first activities in 2011 with Shaware3na, a condensed programme in Cairo, bringing theatre, clowns, mime-shows, video art and contemporary dance to different public spaces such as the Cairo metro and several squares and streets.

The Art of Transit tour in October of this year visited the same cities, and engaged 3,000 people, according to Mahatat. The tour featured a parade-like performance by Abo Karim Marching band and El-Kousha puppets troupe.

The tours are part of a long-term project entitled Access to Art/Shababeek (Windows), which aims at offering increased access to art, whether in terms of viewing art or creating it. Besides the tours, Mahatat are working on an educational component of the project, called Face to Face, which includes workshops with local emerging artists, the most recent of which has been a creative writing workshop in Damietta.

In May 2015, Mahatat will launch the final element of Access to Art/Shababeek, called Art Stations. Here the goal is to get communities – who are not professional or emerging artists – to work together to produce art work for public spaces. The projects will be implemented through local community-based organisations and will begin in Rhoda Island in Cairo, where Mahatat's office is located.