Ahmed Knowmadic Ali speaking with youth at the Surrey forum

Workshop

Blueprint of Me: identity as architecture.

Students build a poem about themselves around one big image: a building, a song, a recipe, a galaxy. One image, held all the way through.

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Surrey youth forum

Who it suits

Good for

Classes working on metaphor, visual thinking, identity maps, personal narrative, or portfolio reflection.

Grades

Grades 4-12

The finished piece

An extended-metaphor poem that treats the self as a designed structure with rooms, foundations, doors, windows, and repairs.

Skills

What students practice.

Understand extended metaphor as a structure, not a decoration

Students learn how one central image can organize a whole poem instead of appearing as a single decorative line.

Organize abstract values into concrete images

Foundations, rooms, walls, doors, windows, and repairs become a practical vocabulary for inner life.

Connect personal history to future design

Students write what they’re made from and who raised them, then what they’re built for.

Revise for coherence across a whole poem

Built through re-reading the full draft, testing whether each room or structural detail still serves the central metaphor, and tightening any image that drifts from it.

The session

Building it, step by step.

Map: identify foundations, rooms, walls, doors, and open spaces
Translate: turn each structural element into a personal idea
Draft: build the poem section by section
Revise: check that the metaphor holds together

Curriculum connections

Language Arts, Visual Arts, metaphor, organization, reflection, and presentation.

From my worksheet

I am built like _____ because _____.
I am made from _____, _____ and _____.
I was raised by _____.
I am built for _____.

Booking

Book Blueprint of Me.

Tell me about your class: grades, how many groups, dates, location, and whether it’s a single visit or part of something longer.

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