Rocking the casbah
interpretation generating income in Morocco
Lynda Burns
Onsite Interpretation
July 2025
In May, I joined a group of mainly US-based international interpretation professionals on a National Association of Interpretation-organised study tour in Morocco.
The study tour mixed museums visits with tours of heritage sites and social enterprises, and hiking. It was like an extended conference field trip – new experiences, assessing the practice of interpretation, networking, and getting to know new people engaged in similar work.
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In a situation like this I’m reminded that the quality I value in interpretation professionals is their innate curiosity. We all get very excited about both the detail and the big picture.
Lynda (bottom left) with tour members in Marrakech
Tourism is a mainstay for the Moroccan economy, especially in rural communities. On the study tour we saw souvenir makers using interpretation to generate substantial income. Two things stood out – the importance of meeting and seeing the makers, and the power of the stories they shared.
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Tamagroute pottery
Our main focus in visiting Tamagroute was to see its revered Koranic library, with manuscripts dating to the 11th century. From there, our guide led us through the narrow, covered streets of the casbah – home to 70 families supported by the local pottery industry.
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We emerged into the intense colour and heat of the communal pottery-making area. The whole process was in front of us – water being drawn from the well, clay mixing, pottery wheels in action, pots drying and emerging from the kilns with their distinctive green hue. The site is centuries old and the only one of its kind remaining in Morocco.
Centuries-old Tamagroute pottery workshop
Our visit finished with the shop. Its stock was not the ubiquitous cheap souvenirs made offshore we’d seen elsewhere. There was not a person on our group who didn’t buy something, both to remember the visit and to return some income to the people we had just met. I calculated that USD$1,000 was spent by our group.
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Tamagroute pottery's distinctive colour palette includes saffron, indigo, and henna
Fire painting in Ait Ben Haddou
The next day we were climbing in the heat of the day through another ancient, fortified village – Ait Ben Haddou. The striking architectural integrity of this area means it is popular with filmmakers – and yes, that includes Game of Thrones.
UNESCO World Heritage Site Air Ben Haddou
We were invited into a small, dark, adobe room, where an artist was seated with a blank scroll. His palette was small bowls of saffron-infused yellow, green tea and sugar brown.
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As the artist painted, the brown was invisible! Our guide told a story of how a military leader used invisible ink writing for communication. When his story was finished, he said, “Today we use it to make paintings.” At the same moment, the artist applied a gas flame to the underside of his scroll – the ink becoming brown to reveal a simple image of the village.
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We also heard the story of jazz singer Josephine Baker using this technique during her intelligence work for the French resistance - the simple act of heating diluted sugar water for spying.
Artist using invisible ink
There was much scrambling to purchase the star village painting! But there were plenty more to be had, and another USD$1,000 passed hands. This artform is found throughout southern Morocco, but we had all walked past stalls of it previously. It was the story we were told, and seeing the actual artist at work, that played with the emotional strings to open our wallets.
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Gentle application of heat to the paper reveals brown ink
What can we learn from this in Aotearoa New Zealand? What products could be made or completed in front of or with visitors, that carry a story of our nature, culture and history?
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The next National Association of Interpretation international tour will be in May 2027 – destination TBC.