Showcasing art by visually impaired children in Qatar to raise funds for childhood blindness in Bangladesh
In Qatar, we’ve been increasingly investing our time in supporting and organising projects in the area of arts and disability. One of our most recent projects brought together Hamad International Airport, HRH Princess Sophie, the Countess of Wessex - patron of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB)- and Qatar Charity to raise funds to reduce childhood blindness in Bangladesh.
We helped our partners put together an exhibition that would create maximum impact by working with artist Rachel Gadsden, a British visual and performance artist, and children from the Al Noor school and Al Ruqayya school for the blind. Rachel conceived and directed the art pieces and helped the children take inspiration from the Museum of Islamic art’s collection, where they were granted exceptional access to a replica of 15th C mask which they were able to touch while listening to an audio description.
This project formed part of an ongoing multicultural art collaboration between UK and Middle Eastern arts organisations called the Al Noor Fragile Vision project, which has given many children around the Gulf the opportunity to showcase their art more widely.
What made this project different was the iconic location for the exhibition – in Hamad airport’s glittering hallways – and the access to a large audience of thousands of international travellers.
