The Mosaic Rooms

The Mosaic Rooms works in collaboration with local secondary schools on special projects which are artist and participant-led, and which are purposeful and led by the lives of the young people who take part. You can visit The Mosaic Rooms with your school; get in touch to arrange this by contacting learning@mosaicrooms.org.

Resources for educators
We have created a resource to enable teachers and other arts practitioners to replicate or adapt School Studio: Structure Restructure in their own educational settings. It contains session plans for both projects, lists of materials needed and reference-artworks, as well as learning outcomes and conversation points. You can download this resource here or ask us to give it to you when you arrive.

We have created a resource for students in Key Stage Three, which is inspired by the Constellations of Multiple Wishes exhibition and includes discussion and a creative activity.

Projects

Nia Fekri: Residency at Holland Park School
Between March and July 2024, Nia collaborated with children in years 9 and 12, with the support of Olivia Tukacevska, Assistant Principal and Head of Art at the school, and their class art teachers.

School Studio: Structure, Restructure
Returning for its third consecutive year, our 2023 schools project saw artists Aya Haidar and Nia Fekri working with two local secondary schools to produce a six-week programme of workshops which encouraged students to consider and reconsider power structures all around them – starting with their schools.This project began in February 2023. Join our community mailing list for more information about this project – email learning@mosaicrooms.org if you would like to join. Read more about this project

School Studio: Mend and Repair
Commissioned by The Mosaic Rooms, artists Aya Haidar, Marwan Kaabour, and Rosie Thwaites worked with three local secondary schools to produce a four-week programme of workshops exploring themes of emergence, transformation and healing after two years of living with the Covid-19 pandemic. Read more about our 2022 Schools Project.

Between Here and There
Between Here and There was a collaboration between students from Kensington Aldridge Academy and artist Harold Offeh which took place in January 2022. The group worked together to explore ideas of place and belonging through mapping, recording, and moving within spaces both inside and around this school and The Mosaic Rooms gallery. Read more about this project.

Lockdown Diaries: Over & Out
In summer 2021, The Mosaic Rooms worked with three local secondary schools on the project Lockdown Diaries: Over & Out. The project was led by artists Aya Haidar and Marwan Kaabour. During the month long project the artists invited students to use different story telling methods used by contemporary artists, to explore their personal experiences of the pandemic Read more about our 2021 Schools’ Project.

Lockdown Diaries: Over&Out was The Mosaic Rooms’ schools special project for 2021.

Artists Aya Haidar and Marwan Kaabour worked with three local secondary schools to explore storytelling in contemporary art. What had the past year meant to young people? Using different story telling tools, students were invited to reflect and process their lived experience of the Coronavirus pandemic. Artworks by the students are on digital display in the gallery at The Mosaic Rooms until 26 September 2021.

The project was inspired by artists who use different forms storytelling to process challenging circumstances and emotions. It drew on art works in the Fehras Publishing Practices exhibition and of contemporary artists from South West Asia and North Africa, art works that help to transport lived experience into narratives that are easier to digest and which may offer new possibilities for the future. At the end of the project students had produced a record of their stories. The student groups then came to visit the gallery and meet the artists to see the exhibition and reflect on their experience of the project.

Lockdown Diaries: Over&Out followed on from The Mosaic Rooms 2020 schools project Together Apart which worked with students under the first Covid 19 lockdown in the UK. This second project marked a different moment one year later and encouraged the young people to look back on what they wish to remember.

The project was launched live online via Zoom, week recorded videos were released on The Mosaic Rooms’ Vimeo. Other schools are invited to use the resources to teach their own students, contact Creative Learning Curator Najia Bagi for details through info@mosaicrooms.org.

Week 1 Video – Lockdown Diaries: Over&Out

http://https://vimeo.com/548795518

Week 1 PDF

Week 2 Videos – Lockdown Diaries: Over&Out

http://https://vimeo.com/548808635

 

http://https://vimeo.com/548814672

Week 2 PDF

Week 3 Video – Lockdown Diaries: Over&Out

http://https://vimeo.com/549326886

Week 3 PDF

Project partners

Lockdown Diaries: Over&Out project has been devised in partnership with three local schools Kensington Aldridge Academy, Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School and Holland Park School, and was shaped collaboratively with teachers from those schools to make sure that the project offered perspectives and activities that are not currently covered in the school curriculum.

 

About this project

School Studio: Mend & Repair is this year’s iteration of The Mosaic Rooms’ annual Schools Project. It follows on from our 2021 Schools’ Project Lockdown Diaries: Over & Out.

About the artists

Aya Haidar graduated with a BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art, during which she completed an exchange program at School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). She then went on to graduate with an MSc in NGOs and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Aya’s current work focuses on the recycling of found and disposable objects making poetic works that explore labour, displacement, domesticity, womanhood and memory, with a particular focus on the Middle East through the histories contained within aged, and culturally specific objects.

Aya has been involved in numerous social engagement projects, including Deveron Projects residency program, Mosaic Rooms’ Together Apart: Lockdown Diaries, Cubitt’s Out of Service, INIVA’s A Place for Conversation, V&A’s Record, Resist, Reframe, Tate’s Illuminating Cultures program and INIVA’s Emotional Learning Cards, as well as being selected for Hans Ulrich Obrist and Hoor Al Qasemi’s Do It Arab project (2016).

Marwan Kaabour is an independent graphic designer and visual artist from Beirut. He moved to London in 2011 to pursue a master’s degree in Graphic Design from the London College of Communication, then joined Barnbrook – one of the UK’s most formidable and celebrated design agencies – as Designer and later Senior Designer. His work with institutions, brands and individuals in the art and cultural sector ranges from creating visual identities, publication and exhibition design, to marketing campaigns, wayfinding systems and art direction.

He has worked with some of the world’s most exciting cultural institutions and publishers including Phaidon, Art Basel, V&A Museum, The National Gallery, Museum Brandhorst, Thames & Hudson, Serpentine Galleries, Hayward Gallery, Somerset House, and South London Gallery. He designed the much-celebrated Rihanna book, which was named as one of Time magazine’s best photo books of 2019.

He founded his own design practice in 2020, where he continues working and collaborating with artists and art institutions. In 2019, he founded Takweer, a platform that explores and archives queer narratives in Arab history and popular culture.

Rosie Thwaites is a creator of content for children – written, visual, multimedia and educational. She has made content for schools, charities, television and online. Her work is informed by her solid background in teaching and arts-education programme management.

Rosie studied Fine Art BA at Goldsmiths. After completing a PGCE in 2003, she taught Art and Design in the state sector for 5 years (at secondary school level). In 2007, she joined the Royal Drawing School to create a London-wide arts-education programme providing intensive engagement with art for deserving young people aged 10-18.

She now creates education content for clients such as The Mosaic Rooms, Ragdoll Production Company, Children’s Story Hour, and The New School. She was long-listed for the World Illustration Awards in 2022.