Tag Archives: arts and crafts

The centre of Cairo, Egypt’s sprawling and populous ancient capital on the banks of the Nile River, is so dense with vibrant culture and UNESCO- listed history as to be overwhelming. So, it pays to sample small sections at a time. The Al-Sayeda Zainab Governorate is one of the city’s oldest and most crowded neighbourhoods. […]

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It was a glorious Autumn day.  The mood of the participants at the annual Ephemeral – a one day festival celebrating the ever-changing light and landscape of the Panboola Wetlands – was one of gratitude: gratitude for the weather, which was allowing us to wander and workshop outdoors in comfort; gratitude for the space, which […]

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If you are like me – or, indeed, like the majority of people in the modern world – you spent most of your childhood in a standardised classroom. Schools are so “alike” all around the world that it is hard to remember that it wasn’t always this way:  for hundreds of thousands of years, children […]

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“Development” in Papua New Guinea is a double-edge sword. It is hard to imagine how the country could be more diverse! This rugged land of rivers teeming with crocodiles and jungle-clad, mosquito-infested mountains, is home to about 8.5 million people. Predominantly Papuans and Austronesians, the population also includes Negritos, Micronesians, and Polynesians. Papua New Guinea only gained […]

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It takes a lot of time to prepare for a Papua New Guinean sing-sing.  Ancient masks and costumes – some pieces carved from wood and others woven from leaves and grasses: all decorated with paint, shells or feathers – have to be checked and repaired. New costume details need to be fashioned from leaves and grasses. And […]

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