The A.R.M. Holding Children’s Programme brings together artists and designers to closely collaborate with local schools through bespoke workshops. The programme aims to provide UAE based school children with opportunities to grow and develop their interest and understanding of the arts through interacting with a roster of international artists and familiarizing them with a wide range of art and design practices.
The inaugural edition of the A.R.M. Holding Children’s Programme took place in September 2021 and brought together 1,800+ children from 70 schools across the UAE, who participated in the week-long Noom Project. Developed by design duo Studio Sain, the workshops invited children to create an alternative living habitat on a fictional version of the moon.
The classroom-based art workshops that make up the Noom Project offered a temporary opportunity to explore how a new society might be constructed, generating imaginary, intuitive and innovative objects. Alongside the UAE’s space mission to Mars and sending the first Emirati into space, the workshop was conceptualized to test ideas around the central question, “How would you construct a sustainable community in outer space?”
A.R.M. Holding is a private investment firm and a multi-focused economic enabler investing in partnerships that reinforce Dubai’s position as the global capital of culture and innovation. It collaborates to that end with Art Dubai on a number of initiatives that foster young talent and creativity in the emirate.
Studio Sain is a contemporary design studio focusing on experimental object design and conceptual educational workshops. Founded in 2018 by Namuun Zimmermann (DE) and Martijn Rigters (NL), Studio Sain explores the broader subject of design from a human-centred approach, working in the fields of object design, research and education.
Their projects have a multidisciplinary approach and embrace the changing role of design within contemporary societal structures. Through different forms of events, workshops and interventions, they explore alternative and new methods, tools and processes for design education.
The duo formed their partnership after graduating from the Design Products course at the Royal College of Art, London. After having worked in academia, industrial and experimental product design, they decided to join their design disciplines in order to explore the potential of design from a multidisciplinary approach.
Currently the duo are lecturers at the Industrial Design Department at Xi’an Jiaotong – Liverpool University in Suzhou, China.
