Don’t Stop Drawing Exhibition: Blog by Camden CS Hazzel Tabernilla

The Don’t Stop Drawing: Visual Diaries of Solidarity with Gaza exhibition took place at P21 gallery from 19th March to 2nd April 2024. It showcased artwork created by Mazen Kerbaj and Jana Traboulsi. These drawings were presented in chronological order, showing the timeline of when each piece was posted on Instagram, since the devastating war on Gaza started in October 2023.

Camden Citizen Scientist Hazzel Tabernilla interviewing artist Mazen Kerbaj during the exhibition opening, March 19th 2024.

Looking at each piece in person and going through the exhibition chronologically, it was like re-living those events again. Each drawing brings back memories of the atrocities that have happened. Each video or image you see on social media, each piece of news you hear or read online, all of it was condensed into an artwork that conveys so much emotion. The timeline puts into perspective how long the war on Gaza has been going on. It makes you feel helpless.

It’s devastating.

During the exhibition, I spoke with Mazen Kerbaj to discuss his work. When the war on Gaza started, drawing was his reaction. Drawing is his natural reaction to anything, to good things, but mostly to bad things. Mazen told me that the war on Gaza was “one of the worst things I have witnessed, thus the amount of drawings.”

These drawings serve as a witness to these horrific events. With videos and pictures surfacing, then quickly being buried by new atrocities every week, sometimes it’s difficult to remember everything that has happened months ago due to the overdose of horrors. These drawings help us follow as events unfold, while also archiving these events for people in the future.

Responses by citizen scientists from Palestine, Lebanon and London were also shown in the gallery. One such response is by Maria, where she drew a bird found in the Middle East. She explained how this bird had a cry which sounds like “see, see, see,” as if the bird is calling you to not ignore or look away from what is going on in Gaza, and to remember what you have seen.

Responses by PROCOL Citizen Scientists Nawal Hamad (Ramallah, Palestine), Manar Younes (Nablus, Palestine), Maria (London. UK), and Rahaf Zaher (Beirut Lebanon)

 

Speaking with visitors from the exhibit, it was clear that the drawings helped to express and articulate how people feel about the situation in Gaza, with Sirine expressing how amazed she was at how the artwork conveys a lot of emotions. Emily felt the heaviness of the situation as you cast your mind back to the images of individuals you see online.

A common sentiment shared by Hussein and Mara is that it is important to attend events like this and being willing to actively engage and read about these stories. Feeling uncomfortable from these stories and recognising all these intense emotions is important for understanding the atrocities of what’s happening there. As pointed out by Hussein, the exhibit makes you feel “sorrow, but there is hope.” With visitors like Mara and Holly also echoing the feeling of hope and happiness from seeing so many people coming together for the exhibit.

It is clear many people stand in solidarity for Gaza.

The crowd during the exhibition opening day, Photo by Hazzel Tabernilla

Debunking the Myth of ‘Selling State Assets as the Only Solution’ for Lebanon’s Collapsing Banking Sector

Debunking the Myth of ‘Selling State Assets as the Only Solution’ for Lebanon’s Collapsing Banking Sector

Liquidating the state’s assets is most surely not the only option available to address the ongoing socioeconomic crises, but it is portrayed as such because it is the only one that avails the political-financial class locally. It further rejuvenates the cycle of political exploitation and comes at the expense of sacrificing assistance to the most vulnerable. Nevertheless, what remains unanimous among the majority of parliamentarians is their refusal to let the banking sector (commercial banks and the Central Bank) in Lebanon bear the brunt of the crisis.

Navigating the certainty of uncertainty

Navigating the certainty of uncertainty

Lebanon's severe economic crisis and political instability is having a devastating impact on people's livelihoods. The crisis has led to critical deficits in the provision of essential public services and to the erosion of public trust. These issues and how we can approach them were the main topics of discussion at Procol Lebanon’s Annual Conference ‘Vital Lebanon: uncertainty, solidarity, activism and energetics’, that took place from 9-11 March 2023 in Beirut.

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Financial Recovery in Lebanon: Power to the Rich or a Pathway to Prosperity?

The banking sector in Lebanon has shifted from being perceived as the bastion of the country’s economy to becoming a prime culprit in the crumbling of the financial system. Ever since the protests erupted against the political establishment in 2019, local commercial banks have been consistently blamed for Lebanon’s economic collapse, and in many instances physically attacked, vandalised and damaged. 

Bank Hold-Ups in Lebanon: A Crisis of Morality?

Bank Hold-Ups in Lebanon: A Crisis of Morality?

Since November 2019, local banks in Lebanon have been imposing a Capital Control scheme, unratified by parliament, under the decree of the Central Bank. For a while, depositors were prohibited from withdrawing foreign currency deposited prior to that month, and a weekly limit was set on withdrawals in Lebanese Lira. Later on, while the official Lebanese Lira was still fixed at 1,507 to the dollar and the black market rate was escalating rapidly, reaching 40,000 to the dollar in 2022, depositors were allowed to withdraw limited amounts of their money at what came to be known as the ‘Lebanese Dollar’ (or ‘Lollar’) rate, first at 3,900LL starting in July 2020, and then at 8,000LL starting in December 2021.

MOOC: A Tool for Research

MOOC: A Tool for Research

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Our journey now has reached another stage, a stage where we are reflecting on the work that we have done for the last few years. Our goal is not only to reflect on our experience from working on MOOCs; we want to reflect on the participants’ experiences as well, to see what type of impact the MOOCs had on them.

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Collaborative Learning in MOOCs

In the previous blog post about our experience in creating videos, we mentioned how videos are a major component in MOOCs’ learning designs. Videos in MOOCs not only provide a different type of learning, but they also allow participants to interact with the content and share what they learned by building online learning communities. In this blog, we discuss how MOOCs facilitate knowledge and information sharing between participants through collaborative learning environments.

Learning Differently through Videos in MOOCs

Learning Differently through Videos in MOOCs

For the last four years, the RELIEF center has been designing and developing MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) with several partners based in Lebanon and in different regions of the world on different topics that are up-to-date with people’s current interests and needs. In this series of blogs, we’re going to present the best practices, challenges, and lessons learned from our experience working on MOOCs delivered in English and Arabic. By sharing our experience, we hope to play an important role in online learning for adults and bring you new ideas, whether you work in the online learning field or plan to do so.

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In the summer of 2021, frequent power cuts in Lebanon caused by a shortage of fuel affected the everyday lives of the country’s population. Businesses struggling to survive, hospitals and clinics across the country risk shutting down, leaving patients in intensive care in critical situations if the power goes out. In addition, power cuts hindered water stations from pumping water to people’s homes, increasing the risk of cutting off water for four million people.

Hosting Syrian Refugees in Saida

Hosting Syrian Refugees in Saida

Lebanon has witnessed multiple waves of displaced people throughout its recent history, including the displacement of Palestinians to Lebanon after the occupation of Palestine in 1948, the internal displacement of families from occupied South Lebanon after the Israeli invasion of 1978, and the influx of Syrian refugees after the outbreak of the Syrian crisis in 2011.

From Nigeria to Lebanon

From Nigeria to Lebanon

In the welcome video for this week, we said we wanted to see “Sustainable Energy Access for Communities” not so much as a course, but as a collaboration with you, the participants. The comments and contributions have shown that this really the case. What has been remarkable about the discussion so far is seeing the diversity of participants and the range of rich experience they bring.

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Mar Mikhael Citizen Scientists Join Our Team

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Teaching Online: Lessons learned and Future Prospects

Teaching Online: Lessons learned and Future Prospects

What have teachers learnt about teaching online in the pandemic?

Before the pandemic struck, researchers from the RELIEF Centre and Lebanese University were already cooking up a plan to introduce university teachers to more online methods. We had seen first hand that online methods had been successful in enabling students to access learning when universities were closed during the protests in Lebanon in October 2019.

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Revisiting the research field in the midst of a Pandemic

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