Final year BA Furniture and Product Design students from the Sir John Cass Department of Art, Media and Design (JCAMD), have begun work on a six-week research and design project which focuses on the Saharawi community in Western Sahara. The students will be working on the relationship between design and survival, as well as notions of design for disaster and propaganda.

The project is being run in collaboration with Sandblast Arts, a London based charity established to support the Saharawi people. A presentation of the design work is planned on the students’ return and will be attended by Danielle Smith, the founder of Sandblast and Emily Campbell, Head of Design and Architecture at the British Council.

Sandblast is as a non-profit organisation, set up formally in March 2005. It embraces a broad network of artists, friends of the Saharawis, academics, activists and students who believe in the fundamental justice of the Saharawi cause. It is managed by a six-member board and relies on key associations and partnerships in the educational, non-governmental, cultural and media sectors to develop and promote its mission.

The Moroccan-Mauritanian invasion of Western Sahara, which followed the collapse of Spanish colonial rule in 1975, produced an exodus of refugees fleeing the violence. Substantial numbers of these refugees ended up in the Polisario Front movement's base areas in the Algerian Sahara, when refugee camps were set up south of Tindouf and in Mauritania.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) indicates that approximately 150,000 Sahrawis are present on Algerian territory, although the Moroccan government contends that the figure is much lower. An additional 25,000 Western Sahara refugees reside in Mauritania, according to UNHCR figures. This population consists both of original refugees to the territory and former Tindouf dwellers who have since migrated to Mauritania.

Founding director of Sandblast Arts, Danielle Smith has worked closely with the Saharawi refugee community for over 15 years, frequently visiting the camps since 1991. She is considered an expert on the region and has spoken widely on the Western Sahara issue for the media and at universities, British Parliament and the UN.

Assa Ashuach, Senior Lecturer at JCAMD explains: ‘The Sandblast project is the first in a line of projects that I am trying to introduce as part of a series entitled, London Export. The series will seek to use London’s multicultural design community as a vehicle to generate projects within non-developed countries, with a political and economical complexity. The students have been extremely active and I look forward to seeing the finished work.’

17 January 2008