Design Teaching Artist & Mentor

About the Program

Juthoor: Roots Growing Voices is a new after-school program for high school students rooted in the belief that place is a teacher. Named for the Arabic word for “roots,” Juthoor is part of Al-Bustan (“the garden”) and is built on the idea that young people grow strongest when they understand what they’re rooted in: land, lineage, language, and community. We are looking for an artist whose practice is grounded in land, ecology, and the environments we inhabit to help us build a space where young people can slow down, observe closely, and make work in conversation with the world around them.

This is not an art class about nature. It’s a practice of paying attention: to soil, weather, water, migration, growth, decay, and the ways a place holds memory and community. We want a teaching artist who can guide students to see their own neighborhoods, ecosystems, and inherited landscapes as material, subject, and collaborator.

Who We’re Looking For

We’re seeking an artist, working in any medium (sculpture, textile, painting, printmaking, sound, land art, architectural design, mixed media or something we haven’t thought of), whose work is shaped by:

A sustained relationship to environment, land, or place

Attention to seasonal, ecological, or geological time

Site-responsive or site-specific methods

Materials sourced from or responsive to a particular landscape

Cultural, ancestral, or personal ties to land and belonging

Artists should also be familiar with contemporary art and culture from the Arab world, including its movements, artists, and ongoing conversations, and able to bring that context into the room as a living reference point for students, not a historical footnote.

Experience working with teenagers is valued but not required. What matters most is curiosity, patience, and a genuine desire to mentor, to let students find their own questions rather than handing them answers.

Culminating Event

At the close of the academic year, Juthoor students will present a final performance and exhibition at each school, created in collaboration with three other artist mentors working in different disciplines. This teaching artist will help shape how the environmental, place-based work developed over the year comes together with movement, sound, writing, or performance from the other mentors’ practices into a single shared showing for family, faculty, and community.

Responsibilities

Co-design and lead a sequence of after-school sessions (24 sessions) that introduce students to place-based and environmentally engaged art-making

Bring your own practice into the room: students should see how you think, observe, and make

Take students outdoors when possible; treat the surrounding neighborhood, park, garden, or waterway as a working studio

Mentor students individually as they develop their own relationship to place and material

Collaborate with the three other artist mentors (across disciplines) to plan and stage a culminating performance/exhibition at each school at the close of the academic year

Support students in producing work for that culminating showing

Collaborate with program staff on curriculum, logistics, and student support

Maintain a safe, welcoming, and low-pressure creative environment

Qualifications

Demonstrated art practice centered on environment, ecology, land, or place (please share a portfolio or documentation)

Familiarity with contemporary Arab world art and culture

Comfort working with high school–aged students (14–18)

Willingness to teach both indoor and outdoor sessions

Alignment with Juthoor’s values: curiosity, care for land and community, and art as a form of attention

Details

Deadline to apply: October 2nd, 2026

Program dates: January 4, 2027 – April 15, 2027, (teaching lessons); May 24, 2027 – June 6, 2027 (exhibition production/ presentation)

Location: On-site at partner schools, Philadelphia, PA

Time commitment: 24 sessions plus exhibition/ performance prep and presentation at two schools