Watch this short film about the project by Ashley Alcaide:

There are four ‘tools’ in The Mosaic Rooms garden as part of RESOLVE Collective’s Tools For Solidarity: ‘PRESS!’, ‘CONNECT…’, ‘NURTURE?’, and ‘#COMMUNICATE’. Together, they aim to help explore and question the solidarities that children express in their everyday lives, through tactile play and co-creation. This project is led by our Creative Learning team.

All four ‘tools’ are from recycled materials from previous exhibitions at The Mosaic Rooms and others salvaged from the local area. Each tool responds to moments from a series of workshops led by RESOLVE Collective at Earl’s Court Youth Club in London and with three school groups at the A.M. Qattan Foundation in Ramallah, Palestine. The tools are interactive and you are encouraged to play and work with them to grow the installation. They also each bare their own reciprocal ‘act of solidarity’ in their design process, involving material exchanges with local libraries, returning local ‘weeds’ to the soil, using donated fabrics, and celebrating the ingenuity of young people in Palestine.

Thank you to the brilliant young people who have made this project possible. They are Abdul, Alex, Anna, Benedetta, Isabelle, Kali, Miriam, Ola, Simeon, Sofia (London). And Abeer, Ahmad, Ahmad, Ahmad, Amro, Arwa, Dareen, Dina, Fatima, Hala, Hala, Hala, Hanan, Huda, Ibrahim, Jana, Kaina, Lareen, Layan, Lour, Lubna, Maeiam, Malak, Mariyam, Miriam, Mohammed, Mohammed, Munes, Nadia, Nagham, Noor, Oni, Osama, Ranen, Rayan, Razan, Reemas, Remas, Ritaj, Saja, Saleem, Sara, Sarah, Shahd, Shahed, Shina, Tahreer, Talia, Taym, Tulay, Wijdan, Wood, Yahya, Yaqeen (Ramallah).

These public family workshops will further develop the commission in The Mosaic Rooms’ Garden:

July – Lesson Plan: ‘Yalla Seeding’ by Mohammad Saleh
August – Lesson Plan: ‘You Draw My Hum’ by Nia Fekri
September- Lesson Plan: ‘Carving Other Ways’ by STUART
October – Lesson Plan: ‘My Dream Hoash‘ by Space Black

You can see our other events and projects for children and families here.

THE FOUR TOOLS:
PRESS!
Inspired by the workshops in Palestine with the A.M. Qattan Foundation, Al Mustaqbal School in Ramallah, Al-Fajir Al-Jadeeda School in Kufr Aqab, Al Hilal (The Palestine Red Crescent School for The Deaf) in Ramallah, PRESS! is a DIY interpretation of a pneumatic press with a briquette-making compartment to press three simultaneous bricks out of recycled paper.

CONNECT…
Drawing on workshops with the Earl’s Court Youth Club and at the family workshop at The Mosaic Rooms, CONNECT… is a structure made from exhibition vitrines, reconstituted yarn, and strips of old carpet. This tool encourages participants to work together to build three- dimensional structures out of sticks, revealing how reliance and codependence are key factors in design and construction.

NURTURE?
Using local ‘weeds’ and a variety of other plants, NURTURE? is made from existing paving stones in the garden, remixed and reconstructed with lime mortar to make a plant bed. The tool has been activated by Shubbak Festival artist Mohammad Saleh, whose work incorporates seed bombs. It exhibits the new terracotta brick sculptures designed and made by young participants from Earl’s Court Youth Club. At the end of its life, the bricks will return to being used as paving slabs in the garden.

#COMMUNICATE
This tool exists in two parts. The first is a purpose-built library shelf, made from the surplus materials from The Mosaic Rooms, which has been gifted to the Young People’s Zone (YPZ) of Brompton Library. The second is a filing cabinet which was gifted by Brompton Library which has been remixed with salvaged material to display books that can be borrowed from the installation.