The Rain Collectors: Public Programme

Tuesday 3rd February Welcoming Ceremony: Performance with Mariam Basha and the Artefact 18:00-20:00

Thursday 5th February Panel Talk: Palestine Water, Canaanite Gods, and Ritual 18:00-20:00

Friday 6th February Closing Ceremony: Rain Summoning with Bint Mbareh 19:00-22:00

Weaving connections between ancestral places and practices of water with our students and communities in London, join us on Tuesday 3rd February for the Welcoming Ceremony, a performance with Mariam Basha, recalling stories of ancestors, remembering mythologies of rain, seeking meaning in a landscape of occupation and thirst. On Thursday 5th February, the panel talk will bring together partners from our project to discuss the politics of rainwater, erasure, storytelling, and ancestral knowledge. The Closing Ceremony on Friday 6th February will invoke a rain summoning performance and choir with sound artist and researcher Bint Mbareh. Workshops for students will explore glassblowing techniques, interdisciplinary methods, and the links between belief, the built environment, and the importance of our waters. With our families and friends in Gaza always on our minds, we will come together to wish them strength through our rituals.

Welcoming Ceremony: Performance with Mariam Basha and the Artefact

Storytelling performance and rituals to remember ancient knowledge about rain.

The search for water in the rubble of siege; landscapes of grief and thirst; stories of ancestors, echoes of Canaanite Goddesses, Kings of the skies, shapeshifters across forms and time. Informed by an interdisciplinary collective body of research, this performance was created by Mariam Basha as part of The Rain Collectors. Its centre piece is the artefact, an ode to rain deities and technologies; a structure created with Palestinian craftsmen using materials from the land and sea: mother-of-pearl, olive wood, and clay. The performance is open to all ages. It will be in Arabic with English translation.

Panel Talk: Palestine Water, Canaanite Gods, and Ritual

A conversation about the politics of rainwater, erasure, and cultural heritage in Palestine.

Bringing together perspectives from ecology, comparative mythology, cultural heritage, and the arts, we will discuss what it means to understand Palestine through rain. In a conversation between Ahmad Nabil, Dr. Omar Tesdell and Fareed Tamallah (joining remotely) and Bint Mbareh, we will follow what links the traces of rain summoning practices, the legends of Canaanite Gods, the changing precipitation patterns which mark climate change in these lands, and the ways that ecological knowledge continues to be held, practiced, and creatively known in community.

Closing Ceremony: Rain Summoning with Bint Mbareh

Performance and collective vocalisations with sound artist and musician Bint Mbareh.

⁠⁠The invocation guided by Bint Mbareh on the 6th of February is twofold: one direct introduction into the art of rain summoning in Palestine through the field recordings Bint Mbareh made during her field research; enlivened by song and other musical forms. The second segment is a choir for non musicians that takes the social forms of rain summoning (e.g. call and response) and transforms them into a method for participatory vocalisation fit for London in 2026.

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Host or Publisher RCA School of Architecture