“I love art, we paint at school but this workshop is different, in this moment I feel that I’m a famous artist.”

“I would like to be a fashion designer, I’m drawing some of my own designs in the mural and I WANT people to see them.”

These are just a handful of the comments made by some of the students who took part in Edge of Arabia’s education programme during the launch of our World Tour.

There were two workshops, one hosted by the prestigious Hewar Gallery on the 53rd floor of the Kingdom Tower itself, the other at the Al Tarbiya Al Ahlieah School, exclusively a girls zone! In both murals, the artists discussed themes of Saudi heritage, cultural identity and modernity with the children to get them inspired and expressive!

The students were selected from the Mawhiba schools partnership and the International Child Art Foundation and were from Saudi, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, and the United States making it a truly international collaboration!

After two days of paint, stencils, music, laughter and a lot of fun, emerged two beautiful murals capturing the essence of some of our artists yet expressed through the eyes of the young creatives. They are on display in Jeddah in the office of Bab Rizq Jameel, our supportive education partners who share our value of inspiring creativity in young people in Saudi.

“Two days aren’t enough for me, I want to paint and paint and show everyone my work.”

I went to Putney High School today, my old 6th form, to give a talk to the girls about the exhibition and encourage them to visit before EoA packs up and re-locates. As always, I enjoyed sharing my knowledge and love for the project and hopefully inspiring some of the girls to use the artists and artwork in their own projects.

I was pleased to know that most of the girls had all come across the exhibition, on the underground, in the posters around their school. When I asked them what they knew of or what comes to mind if one says Saudi, I got the typical responses, ‘camels’, ‘desert’, ‘oil’, ’scarved women’… It was incredibly satisfying to show them a side to Saudi Arabia (and the Middle East) that many of them would never have come across if it wasn’t for this exhibition.

Shabina from Dunraven Scool in South London with the Edge of Arabia Teachers Pack.