Artisan Camp in Tameslouht: Keeping Girls in Touch with Traditional Moroccan Crafting

By Sarah Quinn, PCV

Why are younger women less interested in traditional crafts and what can we do to change that?

This was the question that ultimately led to our Artisan Camp in Tameslouht this summer.

Our plan: for 10 days approximately 40 young women (late teens to early 20s) would work on learning traditional Moroccan crafts directly from artisans themselves: Fesi embroidery, 3la 7sab embroidery, crochet, or basket embellishment. Thanks to a grant through World Connect, we even had funding to cover the many necessary supplies.

In addition to learning and practicing the crafts, we planned workshops, led by both PCVs and local community leaders, to put traditional crafts into a 21st century context—topics included marketing, color theory, accounting…all of those business-y things that are so important this day in age for both product development and selling.

The last day would be an open house for the young women’s moms, an opportunity to bring the women of the community together and celebrate their daughters’ hard work.

As all PCVs know, the best laid plans usually don’t go as planned. So when it turned out that the group of campers who showed up numbered 75, not 40, and were in the 10-12 year old age range rather than the 16-25 age range, we had some re-organizing to do. Like scrapping our intensive workshop on bookkeeping.

No worries though: the girls embraced crafting whole-heartedly. And the workshops, adjusted for the audience, were wonderful.

First up was Returned PCV Heather from Mushmina and Kenza, one of the artisans she works with. They talked to the girls about product development and how their amazing company started from just a simple idea. After their presentation, the girls drew personality webs and jotted down all of the adjectives that they would use to describe themselves.

Other workshop leaders included Naima Kassi, a clothing designer from Marrakech, Hassania Ayoubi, a university student studying Human Development, Abdelatif Jâaidi, the President of the Associations’ Space of the El Haouz province, and Naima Wahmane, an artist from Amizmiz, Malika Kassi, a representative from the High Atlas Foundation, two representatives from the Moroccan Ministry of Artisana, and lastly, Zakia Lemerini, the president of the Gueliz commune and the president of the Nakhla Association for Women and Children.

On days without workshops, the afternoons were dedicated to watching the “You Can Dream” video, having a recycled-goods Project Runway, designing a mural, and lots of games. And when a planned for speaker didn’t show up? The girls grabbed their materials and jumped back into crafting without being asked. 

Of course no camp is complete with a closing party. On the final day, moms and younger siblings came to celebrate, see their fruits of their daughters’ labor, and meet the camp leaders. Zakia spoke about being treated differently than her brothers growing up, but not letting this taste of inferiority define her life. She chose to study a male-dominated field, geology, that left her spending nights by herself in the mountains. After all of this, she said, I didn’t turn out badly– I still got married, I still had kids, I still was able to do all of those tasks that so traditionally define women. At the same time, I was able to continue my career as a geologist, become a college professor, become the president of the Gueliz commune, and start an association for women and children.

This message seemed to crop up throughout the camp, both directly and indirectly– not necessarily that these girls should buck the system and never get married and define their lives by their careers, but that they should be able to have the skills and the confidence to make that choice if they wanted to. For those who do make that choice, traditional crafts are a potential income-generating activity that doesn’t really require women to leave the house. Working on Fesi embroidery can be accomplished in one’s pajamas, watching TV. It’s a ridiculously simple and effective model for women who either want to or have to get married and stay home with their kids.

But artisan skills, the original goal of the camp, almost became of secondary importance when we saw how positively the girls responded to the strong, independent, successful women who led workshops throughout the 10 days. Some of these women managed to play the traditional role of wife and mother while doing something 110% for themselves, whether it was working for Mushmina, like Kenza, or starting an association, like Zakia. Others, like both Naimas, Malika, and Hassania, are unmarried and spending their time pursuing something that they find to be of value, both to themselves and to society. Meanwhile, our girls were learning to think creatively, solve problems independently as they arose within their work, to recognize opportunities for them to step up as leaders, and to have the confidence to take that crucial step.

And thus, certificates were handed out, tears were shed, and we closed out the camp with lots of the adorable girls asking when the next camp would be. That’s probably a good sign.

To learn more about Sarah’s camp, and to see a bunch more adorable pictures, read the full post on her blog.