In the context of developing the creative, cognitive, and life skills of craftspersons and designers in the fields of heritage industries, Athar Lina Heritage Design Thinking School Project (ALHDTS) is announcing its new workshop for professionals; Wood Restoration Workshop.

The workshop includes both theoretical and practical components. Participants will be exposed during this 7-day workshop to a number of field visits, lectures, discussions, and hands-on activities.

The workshop aims to provide interested fresh graduates and young professionals with the following skills: • Restoring and reusing old wood • Analyzing and reproducing geometrical patterns • Documentation in the field of conservation, specifically in wood restoration • Ethics of restoration • Techniques of wood restoration

Participants will have the opportunity to restore wooden ceiling panels, starting with documentation and all the way to designing alternative proposals for the reuse of the panels.

This workshop is part of the second season of ALHDTS project, run by Built environment collective, funded by Drosos Foundation, under the supervision of the Ministry of Social Solidarity.

Venue: al-Khalifa Community center

Dates: Saturday the 20th of February 2021 to Saturday the 27th of February 2021.

Schedule: Saturdays: 2 full working Saturdays of 8 hours from 10:00 am to 06:00 pm. Sunday to Thursday: from 03:30 pm to 08:00 pm.

Instructors: Seif El-Rashidy, Ahmed Mansour and May al-Ibrashy with the aid of professionals in the fields of geometrical patterns production and wood restoration.

Eligibility: The workshop is designed to host 12 participants who should have a background in design or/and conservation background. Age: 18-35 Eligible disciplines: Artists, product, graphic and interior designers/design students, wood craftspersons, and conservation and restoration workers/students.

The following skills will be a plus: • Drawing skills whether manually or digitally • General knowledge of wood finishes • Architectural/Interior Design skills • The ability to use drawing software such as Autodesk AutoCAD

Registration fees: 1400EGP

Scholarship Availability: - 3 full scholarships - 3 half scholarships

To apply to the workshop please fill in this application form.

Seif El Rashidi is an art historian who graduated from the American University in Cairo's Islamic art program. He specializes in the management of heritage projects involving community engagement and has worked for ten years in cultural preservation in Cairo's al-Darb al-Ahmar, the tentmakers' neighborhood. Much of his research and writing is about the Islamic world and its visual heritage.

Ahmed Mansour is an architect with a bachelor's degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo, 2002. He has received his M.Sc. in the conservation of monuments and historical sites at the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation (RLICC) at KULeuven, Belgium in 2009. He has worked on projects concerned with the rehabilitation and re-use of historic buildings and the regeneration of traditional residential areas. From July 2010 to December 2014, Ahmed has been the Proxy Scientific Coordinator, a UNESCO consultant within the Urban Regeneration for Historic Cairo project. Ahmed is the heritage industries consultant of Athar Lina Heritage Design Thinking School.

May al-Ibrashy is the founder and chair of Megawra|Built Environment Collective, a twin institution consisting of an Egyptian NGO and consultancy office working on issues of the built environment. She coordinates Athar Lina, an initiative run by Megawra-BEC that conserves the heritage of al-Khalifa in Historic Cairo and conceives of it as a driver for community development.