Negotiating conflict through participatory art and architecture

The Approach

Using play methodologies and architectural strategies to make creative interventions in contested urban spaces, Hafeda uses community participation and action to instigate propositional thinking, through which participants envision changes to their immediate social and physical environment. For example, art and design workshops led by Febrik resulted in collaboratively produced outputs including events, temporary art installations and permanent play structure, as well as proposing new urban design policies.

This methodology developed during site-specific projects in Palestinian refugee camps in the Middle East and demonstrated the potential for play and architectural interventions to be used as tools for marginalised and vulnerable groups to claim and contest ownership of space by transforming abandoned objects into play items. These methodologies were further developed and explored as practice as research after Hafeda joined LBU in 2014.

Shop of Possibilities

Hafeda’s subsequent social art commissions for SLG, ‘Shop of Possibilities’ (SoP), an art and play space (2012-17) and Serpentine Galleries, applied these participatory methodologies to social art projects with children and young people from Southwark and Westminster in London; seeking to build community cohesion and reclaim public space. Working with Charif, for the SLG commission, Hafeda remodelled a disused retail unit within the Sceaux Gardens Estate in Southwark to create the SoP. Originally envisaged as a temporary space, central to the design of the project were Hafeda’s principles of freedom and invention: encouraging children and families to scavenge materials from around the estate to be used during self-initiated free-play activities led by the children, during which adults present were primarily facilitators as opposed to leaders. Febrik’s projects’ exploration of the spatial dynamics of community groups was presented in the exhibition ‘The Social Playground: Space of Protest’ at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, which brought together their projects which had developed models of ‘social playgrounds’ that explored the potential of play as a mechanism for protest in the Middle East and the UK.

Sewing Borders

In 2017, The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, Ashkal Alwan, commissioned Hafeda to produce the film ‘Sewing Borders’. The film captured the experience of residents from Beirut as they undertook a project designed by Hafeda, using sewing to explore maps – prompting historical consideration of borders and positioning participants within a continuous timeline of displacement in the Middle East from past to present. Typical of Hafeda’s approach to creating artworks following a participatory project, the film bridges the temporality of the workshops, creating a visual language with which the participatory project is made visible, without resorting to a documentary approach.

The Impact

Hafeda’s work instigated long-term social benefits to diverse and deprived communities in London (2014-present), Portugal (2017-present), Brazil (2019-present) and Lebanon (2019-present). His projects resulted in improved social, critical and creative skills amongst 696 children, young people and adults; empowering them to assert their rights and opinions about public space and resulting in the creation of permanent infrastructural and social frameworks serving communities. Hafeda’s work has influenced the decision-making and practice of councils and authorities in London and Braga, Portugal; UK housing developers; South London Gallery and MK Gallery in the UK; and international arts commissioning by curator Amanda Abi Khalil.

Informing estate planning and development in Southwark

The SoP’s space and ethos became a significant presence in the Sceaux Gardens Estate for SLG and the local community. Originally a temporary project, SoP became a permanent, culturally and socially important feature.

Influencing surrounding communities

Sim’s observation that SoP’s “influence stretches far beyond its immediate location” is confirmed by the Children and Families Coordinator at SLG. He describes how the success of SoP, “caused an expansion of the direct delivery the gallery was doing – extending into further ‘off-site’ projects covering six neighbouring estates”. Since 2016, the Freelands Foundation has supported SoP expansion to the surrounding community with awards totalling £306,146, and during 2019 the Art Block team played “a pivotal role in designing and defining the space” being developed at Cezanne House, a neighbouring estate.

SoP was presented as best-practice for housing estate development in an independent report by the non-profit organisation ‘A New Direction’. This report was shared with housing developers, London’s councils and the Greater London Authority; informing the investment of £873,299 for new cultural programmes between 2015-18 for the London Cultural Education Challenge. SoP also influenced the Learning team at MK Gallery, informing the development of their own learning and engagement programming.

Building confidence and skills in young people and children

Hafeda’s participatory methodologies have been proved to benefit young people and children in the long term, helping them to gain confidence, improve wellbeing and develop social skills. Two independent reports on SoP based on interviews with sessional workers, parents and the children, confirms this: “The programme has benefited hundreds of children from vulnerable and disadvantaged backgrounds … supporting their social development and increasing confidence. It has also created training and paid employment opportunities for local young people between ages 16-25 … raising their ambitions and career goals whilst acting as positive role models for younger children”.

Improving civic relations in Braga, Portugal

Recognition of his research led to Hafeda’s invitation from Space Transcribers to mentor creative professionals on a project on the Santa Tecla housing estate in Braga, Portugal in 2017. Hafeda introduced them to participatory creative methodologies, resulting in a series of art events and a film, designed to facilitate community discussions to find a united position that was put forward to the council. Following Hafeda’s work with the Roma community in Santa Tecla, the local community was, “incited… to take action over the future of their own social housing estate”. The Roma community subsequently established ‘Gabinete de Mediação Roma’ in 2018, described by Fernando Ferreira, co-founder of Space Transcribers, as a “resonance of Mohamad and [the] student’s project ... this mediation group continues to act as a bridge of communication and mediation between Santa Tecla’s residents and Braga’s City Council,” moreover, “This mediation process became essential for reducing the conflicts of communication transmitted during the entire regeneration process of the social housing estate”. 

Informing curatorial commissioning

In 2019, independent curator Amanda Abi Khalil selected Hafeda’s film, ‘Sewing Borders’, for the exhibition ‘Living Room UIT (Use It Together)’ at ISCP, New York. She was struck by Hafeda’s ‘rare’ approach to socially engaged practice-as-research and means of making the intangibility of participatory and social practice visible through film. It has changed how Khalil has subsequently commissioned new social art: “Mohamad’s video did influence and impact my practice as a curator, especially when it came to commissioning and the process of commissioning”.