The Imaginary School Program

Travel grant opportunity for the CIMAM conference in Tokyo. Absolutely worth applying.

Open call 2015 — CIMAM Open call 2015 CIMAM 2015 Travel Grant Programfunded by Fundación Cisneros/Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, the Getty Foundation, Los Angeles and the Gwangju Biennale Foundation Tokyo, Japan Thanks to the generous support of the Getty Foundation, Los Angeles, the Fundación Cisneros/Colección P…

Great opportunity for learning, in and on the commons at Cittadellarte, in Italy. A two-weeks workshop rethinking our relationships with each other, considering the social, economic, subjective, environmental aspects of our relations.

UNIDEE - University of Ideas | What do we have in Common? The structure of UNIDEE - University of Ideas is articulated through four types of activities investigating the relationship between art and public sphere:

Photos by Nada Elissa.

March is ending and with it a chapter in the life of the Imaginary School Program comes to an end: our participants will no longer attend sessions but will now be working on their final projects.
Stay tuned for more..
In the meantime, we thank Alia Mossallam, May al-Ibrashy and Megawra, Hamdy Reda and Artellwa, Amr Gharbeia and Sherif Seif El Nasr for filling our month with life.
We also thank Amr Abdel Rahman and Jasmina Metwaly for their constant support and ideas.
Let 'production' time begin...

March is here. We look back at the February session with a smile and a sense of gratitude to all those who helped make it happen.
We thank Akram Ismail Mohamed and Mohamed Osman for sharing their insights. We also thank Waleed Almusharraf, Ahmad Gharbeia, Yahia Shawkat, Ahmad el Droubi, Hussein ElShafei, Lina Attalah and Moustafa Youssef for helping us come to terms with the realm of the 'political' and that of the 'artistic'..
Finally, we are grateful for Amr Abdelrahman and Jasmina Metwaly's constant support, energy and ideas.
We look forward to more encounters in March. :)

KEEP CILAS ALIVE: If you believe in alternative education, consider helping out the Cairo Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences, an independent non-profit organization established in 2012 that offers a one-year study program in the liberal arts for students who are unable to afford a degree from other private institutions.
Recently, CILAS launched a crowd funding campaign on Zoomal to raise funds for the ongoing academic year 2014-2015. It has been forced to do so because of several restrictions imposed by the Egyptian state. Even though the Egyptian constitution very clearly states, "the State shall encourage the establishment of non-profit (…) universities," i.e. institutions of higher education, CILAS was withheld a substantial grant in May 2014 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs without citing any reason.
There are 16 days left to meet the mark! Donate and/or spread the word.

Cairo Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences CILAS | CILAS | Egypt CILAS offers students the opportunity to pursue a yearlong study programme in the liberal arts.

With the January session coming to an end, we would like to extend our gratitude and appreciation to all those who gave us their time and provided invaluable contributions.
We would like to thank Mona Baker, Dina Makram-Ebeid and Sarah Rifky for their stimulating and rich workshops. Our students walked out of them with new tools to make sense of the world around them.
We also want to thank Mohamed Gad, Ahmed Ragab and Mohamed Shoeir for shedding light on the state of journalism and the literary scene in contemporary Egypt and for their generous contributions.
Finally, we cannot forget our module curators, Amr Abdelrahman and Jasmina Metwaly for their energy, ideas and constant support.
Stay tuned for February! :)

Guess who got the "i" in Mada's culture alphabet 2014?
Yeah that's right, the Imaginary School Program!
Thanks Mada and thanks to all for a great cultural year 2014.

A brighter-than-expected alphabet of culture for 2014 . A is for the Adham Henein Museum, directed by veteran gallerist Karim Francis and dedicated to the veteran sculptor. It has a delightful sculpture garden and opened at the start of the year.

In December’s session the Imaginary School Program focused on the practice of larger local institutions acting in the realm of civil society, and on how they have been influenced by neoliberal management models. In parallel the session looked into alternative organizational formats that have been experimented in Cairo since 2011 like Cimatheque and Mosireen. To widen the context the participants engaged with individuals who have long experiences with funding strategies and their languages, and researchers who focus on the effects of foreign fundings on the local institutional community.
For more information around the session and tISP please check here:
http://beirutbeirut.org/en/events/549960375562756ee5020000

Imaginary School Program's participant Sama Waly writes beautifully together with Jenifer Evans about Rana ElNemr's exhibition on Mada Masr. Read for yourself.

"Are these gardens imagined, as The Dictionary of Imagines Spaces might suggest? Or are they real, like the photos and videos of urban Egypt that make up the bulk of the show? Perhaps the streetlight, real but distorted, fairy-tale-like, is the connecting element. Is the artist denouncing or celebrating human interventions into the natural environment? As her presence in these works is so modest, we can’t tell."

http://www.madamasr.com/sections/culture/very-real-imagined-spaces-rana-elnemr

Very real imagined spaces of Rana ElNemr Rana ElNemr is known for her photographs of abnormalities of urban Egypt, detached from their surrounding context. Beautiful, they invite us to investigate nameless, dissected environments, often devoid of human presence.

tISP left the offices of Takween Integrated Community Development full of admiration. A work that proposes and implements concrete alternatives. Fragile but firm in the standing across disciplines, starting from architecture and urban planning, to management, community psychology, economy, and inevitably also the art of oratory. We highly recommend our readers and users to navigate Tadamun - تضامُن, a users' manual and a platform where research and practice are shared and debated, not only in the usual self-celebratory institutional lingo, but in a genuine openness to critique and analyses.
Enjoy the group photo. And work.

The fruits of self-organization. Great piece by Habiba Effat participant of the Imaginary School Program. Thank you Habiba!

Sofar Sounds fits snugly in Cairo's DIY culture trend Short-lived artist-run spaces, imaginary schools, newspapers set up by groups of journalists, rooftop supper clubs and online metal concerts — DIY initiatives seem to be all the rage in Cairo of late.