The Lajee Centre  is a Palestinian creative cultural children’s centre in Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem.  With children from the Lajee Centre  Leicestershire Artist Paul Gent produced a mural telling the refugees story.  Leicester  Youth Worker Dawn Summers has been a volunteer worker assisting with Lajee summer camps. Leicester teaching assistant Nikki Dean has also been a volunteer at Lajee. In June 2008 young people from the Lajee Centre visited Leicester, performing Dabke dances, showing their videos and a photographic exhibition, and telling their stories in schools and and to the wider public.

The Lajee Centre was established in 2001 by a group of volunteers who wanted to ensure that future generations had greater opportunities and facilities open to them than they themselves had whilst growing up in Aida. Lajee is a registered Palestinian NGO, and a non-profit and non-partisan organization. Lajee works with creativity and art as forms of self-expression, youth-empowerment, creative education and trauma management. Members are mixed gender and range from young children of 4 years old to the ‘New Generation’ group who are 15-20 years old. The New Generation act as project leaders and mentors to younger children and many have been with Lajee for several years and have grown through the Centre into responsible volunteers. The Lajee Centre run projects and courses including in arts, human rights and democracy, photography, Dabka (Palestinian folkloric dance) dancing, music, English language, Palestinian Culture and History, Refugee Rights etc.

Since 2005 Lajee have been working with the artist Rich Wiles on a series of photography projects. Lajee members have now produced 4 photography exhibitions which have been exhibited around Palestine, and internationally in the UK, USA, France, Australia Italy, and in the Netherlands. In 2007 Lajee Centre/Rich Wiles produced two children’s photography books showcasing the work and two new exhibitions. The Dabka dance Troupe performs at many cultural events around Palestine and has performed internationally in Egypt and Syria, they are mixed gender and aged from 10-15 years old.

  
The Wall by Aida Refugee Camp April 2007                                         Mural Aida Refugee Camp Bethlehem 2005 

Lajee Centre have been invited by the Palestinian Cultural Centre in London and and UK schools to bring a group of children and young people over to the UK for around two weeks to showcase their cultural work produced by Aida Camp’s children. This will be the culmination of the international Photography tour but the first time the artists themselves will be able to be present at an exhibition outside of Palestine and able to present their work personally. The UK tour will also include the  Dabka Troupe and young film-makers presenting a full Palestinian cultural experience by children and young people from the Lajee Centre. During the tour they will visit Hull, Leicester and London.

Tour Goals:

• To create links between children/youth from Palestine and children/youth in the  

• UK from all walks of society.

• To showcase Palestinian children’s creativity in the UK as a tool for education and understanding.

• To increase and develop in the UK awareness of Palestinian Arts and Culture.

• To give children/youth a broader understanding of the value and importance of creative/cultural work as a tool for positively representing themselves to the world, and of its power as a tool for communication.

• To work and establish links with different communities and cultural centres in the UK.

• To raise awareness to the contemporary life inside Palestine’s refugee camps, and in Palestine.

• To highlight Palestine’s rich culture and its importance in Palestinian life as a form of expression. Demonstrating this through different art forms both

• traditional (Dabka) and contemporary (Photography, Digital moving image work).

• To create a UK platform from which Lajee children can speak up for themselves, their people, and their rights, through their creativity.