MACFEST at AGGS

Category: Art, Biology, Business, Dance, Diversity, Inspiration, Maths, Music, News, Outside of the Classroom

15 Mar 2022

From the 21^st to 25^th February we celebrated MACFEST across the whole school. MACFEST is the Muslim Arts and Culture Festival and we were very proud to be a host school for the festival this year.

The founder of MACFEST, Qaisra Sharaz, and her team visited school on Monday to launch our MACFEST celebrations at AGGS with some of our Diversity Ambassadors and students from Islamic Society.

On Monday we welcomed the local artist Ashfia Ashrif to school. Ashfia led an illumination art workshop teaching some year 9 how to create their own Turkish floral motifs.

In the school library, books by Muslim artists, with Muslim characters and books about Islam were on display in the library all week. Qaisra Sharaz also very kindly donated 2 of her books to the school library on her visit.

Islamic Society organised some lunchtime sessions for pupils and staff, including a henna session, the opportunity to try on Islamic clothing, and a calligraphy workshop to raise money for Islamic Relief. – see more here

Arabic Calligraphy:
Alongside the fun and exciting events, an artistic Year 12 girl called Maryam S has been creating breath-taking artworks with Arabic Calligraphy. Her stunning backgrounds have been presented with many different textures including polished, smooth, glossy and… Read our Media Team report about Maryam’s calligraphy success here

In lessons, subjects across the school celebrated Muslim Art and Culture. Here is a small selection of activities in lessons:

Year 13 Assembly

Y13 having a TED talk assembly from Tez Ilyas, a comedian from Blackburn, on being a British Muslim:

Business Studies

To celebrate MACFEST we asked our Business students in years 10 and 12 to research the work of Iman Aldebe. She designs clothing for Muslim fashionistas and has a successful turban line that is sold in exclusive stores from Paris to New York. Students learnt about her journey from starting out as an entrepreneur to turning her passion into a lifetime career. Students studied how she has changed the fashion industry and then spent time looking for other influential Muslim designers too.

Biology:

Watching a video of Dr Rana Rajani, an influential Palestinian-Jordanian molecular biologist speaking on Islam and evolution. We watched a short video and had some discussion on the themes it brought up- this was delivered for Year 12, year 10 and some year 11 and 13 classes.