Ongoing Projects
From our incubator site at Tell Mozan to new collaborations across the region, this is where our approach meets the ground.
Tell Mozan / Urkesh
Ancient Urkesh, a major city of the Hurrians, is where our model was born and where it is still tested every day. Recent work includes renewing the site's 'Panorama' and 'Footnote' signage — reprinted texts, repaired stands, replaced glass — together with ongoing conservation of the mudbrick architecture and guided visits for school groups from nearby Qamishli.
The Schools Project
In 2024 new schools joined from Athens, Bergamo, Pavia, Qamishli and Los Angeles. Small classes prepare presentations about their local heritage and meet online to share them. Site visits are a regular part of the project: in December 2024, for example, participating students from Qamishli explored Tell Mozan with our local archaeologist as their guide — many standing inside a royal palace for the first time in their lives.
Island of Arwad, Qal'at Arwad, the Ayyubid fortress & environs
With Syria's Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums, we are working to return the island's two great monuments to public life — the medieval castle as a museum dedicated to the island's past, and the Ayyubid fortress (burj) as a maritime research center — while celebrating the intangible heritage that ties Arwad to its 5,000-year history: boat building, net making and fishing.
Regional Museum Poster Exhibit
With Syria's Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums we are producing a traveling poster exhibit that tells the history of Syria one object at a time — the eye idols of Tell Brak, the numerical tablets of Jebel Aruda, the terracotta molds of Mari — in simple Arabic, designed for schools and community spaces far from the museums that hold the originals.
New horizons
Our model travels. We are working toward a children's guide for a Syrian museum, and planning a project on a palace in Saudi Arabia, not far from Riyadh. Each new engagement adapts the modules — never a copy, always a conversation.
