A Minnesota-based Somali multimedia artist and playwright shared her love of art through various communities around the area, a few days before her performance on May 2.

This year marks the first time Ifrah Monsour has performed in Maine, where she’s in the midst of a residency at Bath’s Chocolate Church Arts Center.

Mansour led a free workshop offered through the CCAC, where local families and children created healing miniature huts called Aqal, a traditional structure that her ancestors used to make and crafted with healing intentions. Aqal means “hut” in the Somali language, and only the participants would know their intentions for building the mini huts, which they would share after the small structures were complete.

“The way I explain it to kids is imagine a modern-day tent all made from nature,” Monsour said.

Monsour has built life-sized Aqals and adapted them to encourage communities to build mini huts. The project inspires Monsour to keep learning and seeking what heals us as communities, individuals and the planet.

When the workshop begins, Monsour has participants write down an intention for why they are building the hut. One student told Monsour that she is building a healing Aqal for her mother’s memories. Another student told Monsour she was born in a structure like an Aqal because people still build them in refugee camps.

“It is more than art making, it is meaning making,” Monsour said.

According to CCAC Art Director Jeremy Eaton, Ifrah’s residency is sparking more opportunities for the public to meet the artist in residence and experience their visual art and cultural practices.

The free Aqal workshops were part of the lead-up to Monsour’s performance of “How to Have Fun in a Civil War,” which featured a matinee for 200 elementary school students from Fisher-Mitchell School and the Wiscasset Elementary School on the morning of May 2 and an evening performance for all ages at the Chocolate Church Arts Center mainstage.

Monsour, who lived outside of her Somali roots for most of her life in America, has been trying to relearn her culture through practices like building an Aqal so she and others can learn about Somali culture. She said the mini hut building is a reminder that our ancestors used to create their homes by hand, using what was around them to make it happen. Especially in the modern age, where Monsour says we need a major shift in how we live and relate to other communities.

“There is nowhere like America where you can literally step out of your house and the whole world is almost in your backyard,” Monsour said. “You hear different languages, you witness people you would not have witnessed.”

Monsour grew up hearing three different languages, not including her own, and she feels it is a blessing to her ears, with the greatest gift being the diversity of cultures in America. Most of Monsour’s work explores the unique gifts we have and highlights the preservation of different cultures living within the country.

“It has been magical to do that in plays, it has been magical to do that in puppetry building, but also utilizing a cultural element,” Monsour said.

She said it has been beautiful to incorporate artistic work into messaging about how to be welcoming to new immigrants and people who are different from you, while also being kind and caring toward the planet.