A Place for Conversation: Artist Aya Haidar

About the exhibiton and project 

A Place for Conversation project was created with Newport Primary School to make a space for parents, teachers and students to reflect on where they feel they belong in terms of culture, identity, heritage and home.

Working with artist Aya Haidar and drama therapist Jodie Cariss parents created quilt samplers reflecting their stories. Aya then worked with a group of gifted art students to further explore heritage through conversation to create a second set of samplers. Aya also led a workshop with teachers, through which the teachers could created samplers reflecting who they are using flags and sybmbols by exploring questions such as ‘where are you from?’ to ‘who do you root for during the world cup?’

The final phase of the project saw over 530 students from Newport Primary School creating a quilt sampler reflecting who they were through conversations around the World Cup and what heritage means through these types of events.

The results along with a short film about the project are on display in the Iniva Education Space from 8-26 July.  This project was commissioned by A Space, Newport Primary School and Iniva.