My Art Curriculum Reaches the High Atlas
A classroom of kids in Morocco's High Atlas Mountains spent their art class drawing a straw hat, a red bowl, and a bottle of orange juice. They were working through the art curriculum I built for the Atlas Cultural Foundation (ACF), and this week the photos made it back to me.
How this started
I first came to ACF as a volunteer. I planted peas with a local farmer and hauled stone alongside the masons building the foundation's community center. I also taught art to the kids ACF works with, which is the part that stayed with me.
I had never taught an art class before, and I walked in feeling unprepared. The kids changed that fast. They were talented and eager, and they made things I didn't expect.
I also saw how little they had to work with. There were no regular art classes, and paint and even paper were hard to come by. I came home inspired by them and frustrated that the classes and supplies I take for granted in Minnesota weren't there for them. That frustration turned into this project.
One girl turned hers into a rainbow with birds above it and Arabic writing below. That's what I hoped for: the lessons give them skills, and they decide what to do with them.
This project taught me something I keep coming back to in architecture: you're designing for the people who will use the thing after you're gone. A lesson only works if a teacher can pick it up and run it in her own classroom, in her own language, with the materials on the table in front of her.
Cloe Medina Erickson, ACF's founder, described the curriculum as something "genuinely usable and sustainable." That's the standard I was aiming for, and it means a lot to hear it from her.
Thank you to Cloe, to the teachers who brought these lessons into their classroom, and most of all to the kids. I can't wait to see what they make next.
