Hands On: The Stafford Mihrab

The Stafford Mihrab is a collaborative community arts commission that The Barakat Trust played a role in as funder, advisor, and facilitator.

The project derives from the development of a new mosque and community for Stafford’s Muslim community and the desire to design a mihrab (a decorative niche indicating the direction of prayer) in a way that could bring together different communities in Stafford. The objective was for communities to interact over a shared artistic heritage between Staffordshire’s rich ceramic tradition and the Islamic world. The Barakat Trust connected many of the different parties together, embedded art history into the project, initiated the contact with the tentmakers and managed the production process.

Nadia El-Sebai, an arts professional and Executive Director of The Arab British Centre, conceived and led the project for the Stafford Muslim Community Centre. Under her direction, a series of community workshops were led by artist Shahed Saleem, local engineer and artist Mohammed Younes, and art historian Dr. Richard McClary. Held in partnership with the V&A Wedgwood Collection and the Staffordshire History Centre these workshops had three goals:

• To highlight how the ceramics of the Islamic world had an effect on the pottery of Staffordshire but also how ceramics designed and produced in Staffordshire were exported to a Middle Eastern market
• To introduce to the community historic ceramic objects with relevance to the local area that participants could handle to understand their historic importance
• To encourage the community to be inspired by this relationship between the ceramics of the Islamic world and Staffordshire in designing the new mihrab

These designs were synthesised into a final design that was hand-stitched by specialist artisans in Cairo’s Khayamiyya Street, specifically the workshop of Atef Kamal. Khayamiyya is the Egyptian craft of appliqué, itself with a rich historical tradition. After the production of the pieces in Cairo they were transported back to the UK where the community gathered in Stafford to assemble the mihrab on site at the mosque.

The Stafford Mihrab is the culminating work of Interlaced: Islamic Art in British Life, a project that ran throughout 2025 engaging Stafford communities with ceramics from the Islamic world and Staffordshire, to develop a distinct local design identity for interior elements of the Stafford Muslim Community Centre’s new mosque. Conceived and delivered by Nadia El-Sebai, the project was supported by the Barakat Trust’s Hands-on Islamic Art Grant, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Project partners include Dr Richard McClary of the University of York, who generously made his private collection of Islamic ceramics available to participants; the V&A Wedgwood Collection, Barlaston; and the Staffordshire History Centre.

Thanks to Ethan Jones, Shahed Saleem, and Seif el-Rashidi for the photos.