7Hills and Al-Raseef 153

For the month of July and into August 2021, I was an artist in residence at Al-Raseef 153 with 7Hills Park, an organization that supports the development of inclusive public spaces for youth through skateboarding ideology in Amman, Jordan. 7Hills has been serving local and refugee youth through their skate programming launched in 2016, two years after Jordan’s first skatepark was built, once realizing the lack of funding and community outreach resulted in few visitors to the skatepark. Al-Raseef 153 is the arts branch of 7Hills’ programming, launched in the summer of 2021 operating an arts space storefront directly across the street from the skatepark.

As an artist in residence, I was leading sculpture workshops, assisting with skateboarding classes at the skatepark and in refugee camps, and working with 7Hills youth to design and create a large scale mural at the skatepark, highlighting the values and ethos of 7Hills. As an artist and life long skateboarder of Arabic descent, this was a life changing experience for me, a time when I was immersed in Arabic culture with my communities of people, artists and skateboarders. The Eassa’s come from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria; yet my connection to those places remains opaque, the experience gave me so many answers, yet opened the door for even more questions.