Designing the Commons
El Warcha’s Vision of Public Space
Farah Sayem (b. 1996) is a Tunis-based curator and cultural practitioner whose work explores the physical and political dimensions of urban and common spaces, examining their social and cultural dynamics as tools for transformation and resistance to neoliberalism. Since 2020, she has developed cultural projects promoting the democratisation of art in public spaces, collaborating with L’Art Rue (Dream City), UN Women, Collectif Créatif, La Boîte, Gabes Cinema Fen, and El Warcha. She holds masters degrees in Product Design and Social & Solidarity Management, was part of TASAWAR Curatorial Studios 3, and is currently a PhD researcher (IRG) at Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée – Gustave Eiffel.
My relationship with El Warcha is at once personal, professional, and political. It is a story of friendship, collective experimentation, and sustained commitment to participatory practices. Being part of this collective has shaped my early experiences in the cultural and artistic field as well as my ongoing research on urban cultural commons.
El Warcha Collaborative Design Studio1 was founded by Benjamin Perrot following a residency at Art Rue2 in 2016. The initial vision was to establish a workshop in the heart of the medina of Tunis, Tunisia3 that would actively engage local youth in collective and participatory practices. Over time, the collective expanded its work to include the design and construction of ephemeral installations in public spaces, the creation of events, and collaborative performance-making. In fact, El Warcha prioritises relational practices-workshops, informal gatherings, and interactive interventions that turn everyday urban spaces into sites of encounter and shared creation.
These activities take place in legally secure yet socially open spaces, fostering inclusivity for cultural actors, young people, and neighborhood residents. I discovered the project while working in the Medina of Tunis with the association Collectif Créatif4. I immediately fell in love with their approach and quickly decided to collaborate with them on a new initiative called 7ayi Boustil5, in a neighborhood in Manouba, Tunis. This project, carried out during the difficult pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, was one of the key moments that deepened my connection with El Warcha. I always felt surrounded by friends rather than colleagues, Benjamin Perrot, Aziz Aissaoui, Aziz Ben Romdhane, Radhouan Boudhraa, and Marlène Halbgewachs who were continuously present as we experimented together in public space.
In 2022, the collective relocated to Le Kram6, a northern neighborhood of the capital city, This move brought new challenges and opportunities. Unlike El Hafsia, where El Warcha operated within a dense and vibrant urban fabric, Le Kram required a more focused approach through temporally structured events rather than relying on the natural flow of public life. Integrated into the Mobdioun Association7, El Warcha expanded its capacity for both local and international collaborations.
The collective developed Flottant (cirque and concert), a project shaped by the coastal geography of Le Kram and La Goulette, in collaboration with the DEBO Collective. Today, their activities include participatory workshops, documentary theatre rooted in neighborhood interviews, and cross-disciplinary performances that bring together architecture, design, and contemporary art. Their relationship to public space is central to its practice and evolves according to context. In El Hafsia, the neighborhood functioned as both a workshop and a laboratory, a site of playful experimentation where the everyday and the performative intertwined. The collective emphasised reappropriating and reactivating urban space, cultivating proximity and dialogue among residents, youth, and cultural practitioners. In Le Kram, public space takes on a different meaning. The neighborhood is less a space of transit and more a stable residential environment. As a result, the collective highlights temporality and intensity creating events and interactions that are ephemeral yet resonate within deeper social fabrics. Many activities now take place inside the association’s premises, a legally private space that nevertheless operates as a genuinely shared environment for neighborhood youth. At present, El Warcha is working with women from the neighborhood to develop The Sisterhood Funfair, a joyful yet politically engaged event that concludes a two-year creative journey with young women from El Kram and La Goulette. In collaboration with artists, sports clubs, and students, the project treats sisterhood as a public practice, a way for women to claim space, assert their presence, and build collective power through co-creation. At its core are three participatory performances developed during artistic residencies (2024–2026), exploring sports as tools for empowerment: boxing, football, and bodybuilding. Each day of the celebration features one performance, staged in the streets at the heart of the neighborhoods, within environments transformed through El Warcha’s collectively built scenographies.
Despite the richness of these experiences, the collective faces persistent challenges. Dependence on foreign funding limits long-term planning, creating financial precarity and instability. Organisational capacity is also a concern, the expansion of activities relies on a core team of four, placing strain on coordination and making it difficult to sustain growth while preserving the collective ethos. At the neighborhood level, public engagement requires continuous mediation. In Le Kram, residents often hesitate to enter the space unlike in El Hafsia raising an important question: How can the collective balance structured organisation with openness, ensuring that the space remains both independent and accessible, interior yet exterior, private yet public in practice? This question touches on fundamental tensions within collective cultural practice in urban environments. El Warcha operates at the intersection of several aspects, the ephemeral and the durable, the private and the public, the formal and the informal. It demonstrates how artistic practices can both activate and transform urban space while navigating constraints of resources and context.
In my research, El Warcha serves as both a methodological and conceptual lens. Their practice reveals the potential of urban commons8 as cultural infrastructures spaces where art, design, and architecture intersect with everyday life; where young people, residents, and cultural practitioners negotiate sociality, agency, and collective belonging. Whether through the playful interventions of El Hafsia or the structured engagements of Le Kram, observing the collective’s processes shows how creative practices can cultivate a shared sense of ownership over urban environments.
- El warcha collaborative design studio
- L’art rue
- The Medina of Tunis is the historic center of the city and a traditional Tunisian medina, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.
- Collectif créatif
- 7ayi Boustil
- Le Kram is a town in northern Tunisia. Located between La Goulette, the port of Tunis, and Carthage, it opens onto the Gulf of Tunis to the east and the Lake of Tunis to the west.
- The Moubdioun Association (also known as “Mobdiun – Creative Youth”) is a Tunisian non-profit organization that aims to promote social inclusion and youth empowerment through art, culture, sports, and technology.
- Urban commons are shared urban resources collectively used and governed by a community rather than solely by the state or the market. They emphasize participatory management and the “right to the city” (Harvey, 2012; Ostrom, 1990).
Festival Life creates shared moments of audiences and artists, eye-to-eye
