Gatherings around the Dar Bellarj Speculative Garden
A day-long series of workshops, urban farming and sharings, Dar Bellarj
Gifted Mothers Craft Market
11am to 4pm
The Gifted Mothers will have their crafts for sale, from woven goods, to traditional wear, pottery and tablewares. Come celebrate the talented mothers.
The Proverb as Story, as Memory, as Archive led by Youssef Rochdane
11am to 1pm
This workshop will explore food-related proverbs through a collective discussion facilitated by translator Youssef Rochdane, who will provoke our memories and deepen our understanding of these sayings.
Researchers are fortunate to have an abundance of resources available in English to support their work. However, the situation is quite different when you try to find research materials in Arabic, especially those focusing on dialects. For Youssef, this difficulty is especially felt when searching for proverbs and sayings in Arabic. Youssef is deeply interested in translating proverbs because they carry so much wisdom and cultural significance. They offer unique insights into everyday life, values, and beliefs. However, finding accurate sources in Arabic has been a real challenge. Many proverbs are either lost in translation or simply unavailable in accessible formats, making it hard to fully capture their meaning for a wider audience. This gap has driven his passion for translating these expressions to bridge cultures and preserve the essence of these age-old sayings.
Translation—understood in this workshop as a form of interpretation—serves as both a bridge and sanctuary, a means of archiving these rich worlds and allowing their echoes to resonate across time and space. Each proverb becomes a vessel that preserves not only language and storytelling but also shared experiences and our material histories.
In speaking a proverb, we reinvigorate it, honouring the wisdom and customs of our elders while celebrating the poetics of our language and intangible cultural heritage.
This event is one of four activations organised in collaboration with Dar Bellarj to mark the replanting of their rooftop garden, which throughout October is being reimagined by the gifted mothers of Dar Bellarj, alongside Omar Hassani (MBLA) and Abderazzak Bassir (GDF).
Youssef Rochdne is a researcher, communicator and translator whose journey is deeply rooted in a passion for cultural exchange and storytelling. With a background in multilingual communication, community engagement and working with not-for-profits. Youssef has seamlessly blended his love for languages and storytelling with his commitment to social impact. Over time, Youssef honed his skills by collaborating with numerous NGOs and social sector organisations. Through these experiences, he developed a keen understanding of the intricacies of language, recognising the subtle nuances that distinguish one from another. This proficiency enables him to bridge cultural gaps effectively, tailoring content to resonate with specific audiences. Driven by his passion for cultural preservation and fascination with the intricacies of human expression, Youssef is currently pursuing a PhD in Cultural and Heritage-related Translation. In his research, he delves into the preservation of cultural narratives through the art of storytelling and translation.
11 صباحا إلى 1 بعد الزوال: المثل كقصة، كذاكرة، كأرشيف مع يوسف رشدان
الأمثال هي نوافذ تطل على الثقافة، تكشف لنا الطرق التي نبحث بها عن المعنى ونبنيه. غالبًا ما تكشف عن أهمية ممارساتنا الثقافية، وتفسر لماذا نفعل الأشياء بطريقة معينة، أو لماذا ننسب معاني محددة للأحداث. تحمل الأمثال في طياتها تاريخ واقعنا الاجتماعي والسياسي. وعادةً ما ينقل كبار السن هذه الأمثال، مثل جدة يوسف، التي يصفها بأنها “قاموس متحرك للأمثال” والتي ألهمت حبه لصيغة الأمثال في أعماله الترجمية.
على الرغم من كونها قصيرة، إلا أن الأمثال تتمتع نبرة شاعرية عميقة، وأحيانًا فكاهية، أو حتى غامضة. إنها تقدم دروسا تحذيرية، وتحمل ذكريات وأخلاق وتاريخ. إلا أن تداول بعض الأمثال كأدوات لصنع المعنى بدأ يزول مع تحول الأجيال وتطور الثقافة.
تعمل الترجمة—المفهومة في هذه الورشة كنوع من التفسير—كجسر وملاذ ووسيلة لأرشفة هذه العوالم الغنية، والسماح لأصدائها بالتردد عبر الزمان والمكان. يصبح كل مثل وعاءً يحافظ على اللغة والسرد، وكذلك التجارب المشتركة وتاريخنا المادي.
عند نطق الأمثال، نعيد إليها الحياة، ونكرم حكمة وعادات كبارنا، كما نحتفل بشاعرية لغتنا وتراثنا الثقافي غير المادي.
The Recipe as a Living Archive led by Harvest Festival Creative in Residence Soukayna
2pm to 5pm
What do recipes teach us? Where do they come from? How do we transmit knowledge around natural resources in a time of overconsumption and historical erasure? By sharing recipes around health and beauty that have been orally transmitted by family members and elders from the village of Talat n’ Yaqoub amongst others, we keep alive our ancestral practices related to the land and its surroundings. Using storytelling as a medium, we give depth, meaning and a human narrative to practices and knowledge that is often too easily forgotten and lost. Recipes keep culture alive, they encompass history, social and ecological influences and give us detailed insight into where they came to be.
The workshop will open at 2 pm with a sharing from Houda and Fadma who Soukayna spent time with in Talat n’Yaqoub during their residency with Harvest festival.
An Abundance of Recipes (Closing Space)
5pm to 7pm
The last hour of this day on the Dar Bellarj Garden Rooftop will celebrate the various activations the garden reopened with. Expect readings from both workshops, sharings by the Gifted Mothers, and the launch of a zine produced earlier in the year for Dar Bellarj with Kima Collective.
These events are two of three activations organised in collaboration with Dar Bellarj to mark the replanting of their rooftop garden, which throughout October is being reimagined by the gifted mothers of Dar Bellarj, alongside Omar Hassani (MBLA) and Abderazzak Bassir (GDF), on the initiative of Francesca Masoero.
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The Dar Bellarj Speculative Garden is a space developed since 2020 by QANAT as part of the Entangled Ecologies research line.