Arts, the environment & sustainability

Join us for the first 2026 lecture in The 12 series

Designer turned artist-scholar Joumana Medlej will take you through the non-linear journey that her career took from design and illustration in Beirut, to uncovering and working with forgotten medieval techniques in the UK. Much of her current work uses plant-based pigments and colours.

www.ocasa.org.uk

Join us for another lecture in The 12 series, this time with designer turned artist-scholar Joumana Medlej.

Joumana will highlight a couple of recent projects where creation intersects with scholarship to show conception, materials, and the process of bringing it all together.

The examples in Joumana’s presentation will show how she combines research with analogue and digital skills to create work with authenticity, depth and meaning. 

She is just completing a Kickstarter-funded book “Inks & Paints of the Islamic Golden Age. A Handbook of Art Technology.’

I recently came across this organisation, Zea Mays, that focuses on sustainable printmaking and sustainable printmaking research.

They have paid for courses but their research documents are free to access and incredibly thorough.

Of particular interest is their research into:

Plant-based Screen Printing ink and

Flocculating Acrylics (this basically teaches you the skills to remove acrylic paint from your waste water before it goes down your household drain).