Jemaa El Fna as a Learning Space
19 May, Jma El Fna as a Learning Space, Jma El Fna, 2pm to 8pm, meeting point, centre courtyard at Les Étoiles de Jemaa El Fna, drop ins welcome throughout day
This event can be delivered in Darija or English depending on the needs of participants. No registration is required.
Come together to explore Jemaa el Fna as a learning space.
Jma el Fna has formed at the intersection of myriad cultures, communities, languages and lands from the Sahel to the High Atlas, the coastlines and beyond. People have gathered at this hub of learning for centuries to share and exchange diverse ways of knowing, of stewarding the land, of caring for each other, and wisdom from the deep.
This collaborative, co-learning, artistic space will engage participants to explore Jamaa Al Fanaa as a learning space – as an ecoversity, a multiversity, or a hub for Mujawara – where there is a recognition of the multiple ways of knowing and the diversity of sources of wisdom – where knowledge is connected to the land and the people and flows through interactions and engagements.
This event is part of a grassroots world of reimagining how learning takes place, and freeing it from the grasp of colonial knowledge production systems which focus learning within capitalist, extractionist, colonial institutions – of schools and universities. Decolonising education is about tuning into our ancestral, earth bound natural learning conglomerations and connections. Cities form part of that learningsphere, and so do myriad other vernacular learning technologies from within our cultural and eco spheres. The idea of Marrakesh as a learning city with Jamaa al Fanaa as its hub is inspired by the example of Udaipur as a learning city, and the work multiple communities including the Indian Multiversities Network, PRALER, Eco-versities alliance, Unschooling communities and Indigenous risings from around the world.
This workshop will be co-created by participants and is open to people of all ages and all denomination. Come, whoever you are, bring yourself fully. Families, children, younger people, older people, the differently abled, the queer, the visitor, the local, those with less financial wealth, those with more financial wealth, the playful and the pensive. We are all welcome.
Bring with you materials you may want to play with. Spend your days before the event, connecting with the place, the people, the materials, the crafts, the ingredients. Talk to people in Jma Al Fnaa, hear their stories, invite them to come too.
There will be an invitational space to share your perceptions and learnings through a collaborative artistic installation or happening.
Rowan Salim is a geographer and learning activist, exploring cooperative, grounded and egalitarian alternatives to schools and universities. She is engaged in rediscovering how we learn in community and in connection with the land. She experiments, connects, hosts workshops and pilots and supports start up groups to tune into and celebrate existing local learning technologies and to design localised learning communities and networks. She set up a pop up alternative learning lab and incubator, co-founded a sociocratic learning community for unschooled children in London called Free We Grow, helped set up the Freedom to Learn Network, and is on her own journey getting acquainted with land and livelihoods learning how to grow food and forage, make medicine, preserve jams, create habitats and whittle wood with Putney Community Gardens.
Rowan has Iraqi heritage, grew up in the UK, Morocco and Yemen and has lived and worked throughout SWANA and in the British Isles. She likes to play, hear stories and share food!
