The Aha moment! Faraz Khan at CMOM, March 8, 2015.
إن سرقت، اسرق جمل، وإن عشقت، اعشق قمر If you steal, steal a camel, and if you love, love someone as radiant as the moon.
The lesson to remember from this proverb is to go out and shoot for the stars! Do not settle for something small and it will be well-worth the effort. And speaking of an effort, I landed in Manhattan, New York to teach at the Muslim Arts Festival at CMOM. Although CMOM is only about 1.5 hour away from Princeton, driving to New York City feels like taking a flight to Djibouti!
Museum: The five-story museum building was packed full of children and parents trying to go from one floor to another. Despite all the traffic, I found the staff to be courteous and caring. On a second thought, I may identify the museum (CMOM) more of an Indoor play/activity center. I tend to think of museums with lots of artifacts, grandeur, and collection of fine works.
Diversity: There is strength in diversity and I could see my Arabic calligraphy class with parents and children of different race and ethnicities. A parent told me that they were looking for more info about my Rutgers Arabic Calligraphy course and so they came to the program. Another parent from Old Bridge, New Jersey came to see me because their daughter is my niece’s Best Friend Forever J. It is remarkable how children played and laughed full of energy but when the time came to sit and do art, they were busy like bees.
Children
“Children are great imitators. So give them something great to imitate.”
CMOM has a grant from Doris Duke Foundation to fund arts related to Muslim culture and Islamic art. My conversation with David Rios, program director at CMOM was about the possibility of expanding activities related to Islamic art. They already have great artists such as Lubna Zahid and Asma Shikoh offering Islamic art classes part-time and will expand their programs further in 2016. I would love to take the program one step further by developing a moving Islamic Art theme exhibition for children. It would be similar to the Crayola Factory kids indoor activity center but way cool.
Have you been to CMOM or any other Children’s educational activity centers? What draws your interest as a parent or child? Please share and enlighten the conversation.
Reem ElShafki, a mutual friend of Tom DiDonato and mine connected us about Islamic Art. Tom is a great guy. He shot the entire episode in about a couple of hours. There is so much more I want to say about American Islamic art and creating culture and community programs such as Push Pause of Fios1 facilitate this conversation. A special thank you to Lisa Lambden, Managing Director of Rosenblum TV and Executive Producer of community related programs such as Verizon TV whom I haven’t met but she had the courage to introduce my ideas (art) to the larger community via Fios1.
