Jameel House, established in 2009 in old Cairo's Fustat area, offers a two-year scholarship programme that equips students with hands-on skills in brass work, ceramics, woodwork and other traditional crafts.

The centre is a collaborative initiative between the King's Foundation School of Traditional Arts in the United Kingdom (UK), Egypt’s Ministry of Culture, and Community Jameel, which was established in 2003 by the Jameel family of Saudi Arabia to support community service in various locations around the world.

Jameel House supports students in learning and mastering the crafts, which then they can use to start a business or pass on the knowledge, becoming teachers themselves. Noha El-Qahwagy, who now heads the brass and metal department, first joined as a student in 2017 after struggling to find a space to learn copper work as a woman.

"The workshops in the market wouldn’t accept a woman working among (male) workers, so I kept searching a lot," she said.

With over 200 graduates so far, the programme is designed to reconnect artists with the full process, from designing to execution, Jameel House programme manager, Mamdouh Sakr, said. An annual exhibition is held for students to showcase and sell their handcrafted work at the end of each year.

Egyptian student, Yasmine al-Gebaly, 32, says the impact of Jameel House is unmistakable.

"After I graduated from university, I realised that I still haven't learnt the thing that I love and would want to continue doing, so I wanted to apply (for the programme) at Jameel House, because I found it a very suitable place for me to learn heritage art in particular, which I have enjoyed very much lately as I grew up," al-Gebaly said.

Head of Brass and Metal Department at Jameel House, Noha el-Qahwagy says the authenticity of the material is essential.

"Brass for me is an authentic material that has been present in all of our homes for a long time. Since I finished Thanawiya Amma (high school certificate), I have been trying to learn this craft, but there wasn’t a suitable place where I could learn. The workshops in the market wouldn’t accept a woman working among (male) workers, so I kept searching a lot, until I almost finished university, there wasn’t a place where I could learn this extensively," el-Qahwagy said.

--Reuters--