All welcome, pre-registration required

This workshop explores pedestrian empowerment as a method of reclaiming public space. The workshop will begin with a tour and contextualisation exercise of the Experimental Earth: Technoflora Series and Where do borders begin? projects curated by Assembly member Omar Darwish, followed by a reading group and hands-on activity by artist-researcher Maitha Ali. 

Participants will reimagine everyday urban elements – like telecom poles – as monuments of collective meaning. Together, we will question who defines monuments and how we might navigate city spaces through walking, cycling, transit and driving. The session will conclude with a collaborative archiving exercise to imagine ways to subvert traditional archives and build a participant-led record of urban life and change.

This programme is organised by the Assembly 2024-2025 member Omar Darwish as part of the 2025 Youth Takeover.

Maitha Ali is a research-driven artist and art educator who believes that art is a vehicle for education toward fostering global communities of solidarity. Her work investigates urban existentialism and angst, human and non-human conviviality and collective memory-making of the domestic built environment. She works with creative methodologies, performance art, text and creative writing, photography and videography, and installation art. Maitha’s practice is a synthesis of her undergraduate studies in political science at NYU and her postgraduate studies in visual, material and museum anthropology at the University of Oxford. She has performed, exhibited and facilitated programmes in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, London, Oxford, New York, and Washington, DC.

Omar Darwish is a member of the 2024-2025 cohort of the Assembly. A Pan-Arabian architect and researcher, he studied Architecture at the American University of Sharjah. A recipient of the 2024 Sheikh Khalifa Scholarship, he explores history and knowledge exchange in the Arab countries and its architectural and political implications today.