As part of our Design Explore project we held a one-day event of workshops and practical demonstrations for 70 young moroccan students at ESAV in Marrakech. The workshops were led by Roger Arquer, Karen Richmond, Fabien Cappello, Silo Studio and Custhom and allowed students to experiment and explore different aspects of design from construction, assembly and detail to material experimentation, observation and screenprinting. Here Jemma Ooi from Custhom writes a little bit about the project and her workshop:-

On another grey afternoon in March, it was a delight to receive an email asking if I’d like to be part of Design Explore, Saturday Special in Morrocco.

Marrakech is renowned for such a wealth of pattern and colour, so I was hesitant as to what I could bring to a series of workshops for people so entrenched in rich design. But after discussions with the British Council team, we proposed a series of workshops that introduced how widely used the process of screen-printing is, how to create stencils and print.

Having walked through the main square and surrounding streets of Marrakech, it was fascinating to see the making skills of the local people from carving stone to tooling leather, yet the dying and printing of cloth wasn’t as evident in the city, so this was a great way to open up the discussion of the printed materials we live with and how they are made.

Working on such fast paced workshops on the Saturday, we started by introducing the use of screen-printing, its properties and where hand printing is used day to day. Each group then dived into the idea of creating stencils, experimenting with how colour and pattern is created in layers and textile printing.

It was wonderful to be a part of the workshops, the students were buzzing with energy, there was a great atmosphere and amazing prints created throughout the day.