Learning to Live With the Changed Landscape: Aral School Participants Rethink Karakalpakstan

In February, participants from a new school in Nukus joined local foresters on the dried bed of the Aral Sea to plant saxaul. The shrubs can take root in salty ground and help hold down dust blowing across Karakalpakstan. Foresters from the Karauzyak State Forestry Department guided the work, drawing on years of experience in the region. The planting exercise, organized with the United Nations Development Programme, offered an early indication of how the Aral School intends to teach. Its participants work alongside people already responding to the sea’s retreat, learning from the landscape and those who live with its consequences. Now, the school is preparing for a second intake with a six-month residency in Nukus from January to June 2027. Architect and curator Joseph Grima will lead the program, which will focus on climate and landscape. Applications are open until October 25. Based in the capital of Uzbekistan’s autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan, the school brings international practitioners together with participants from the region. The Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF), which established it, announced the new intake and Grima’s appointment during an assembly at the Savitsky Museum in Nukus. The museum owes its remarkable collection to Igor Savitsky, who rescued thousands of works rejected by the Soviet authorities, finding them a refuge in remote Nukus. Gayane Umerova, chair of ACDF, and Grima spoke to The Times of Central Asia about the school’s long-term goals and how local people will help shape its work. “The Aral School was never conceived as a single cohort or a single event. It’s a long-term commitment by the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF) in line with the Government’s plan for Karakalpakstan,” she told The Times of Central Asia. “The programme is designed from the ground up to avoid simply taking knowledge without giving anything back. The cohorts live in Nukus for half a year, not for a two-week field trip, precisely so that the landscape and the people in it are teachers, not subjects.” “Participants would also work directly with local professional bodies and institutions,” Umerova said. “Local experts sit inside the programme’s design, not as guest lecturers brought in to validate conclusions already reached,” she said. [caption id="attachment_56453" align="aligncenter" width="1774"] Group discussion with local community members - Aral School Assembly at the Aral School. Photo courtesy of ACDF.[/caption] Once the world’s fourth-largest lake, the Aral Sea shrank as Soviet irrigation projects diverted water from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya to grow cotton and other crops. The retreat devastated fishing communities and exposed a seabed contaminated by agricultural chemicals. Wind carried salt and dust across the surrounding land. In Moynaq, once a fishing port, fishermen dug channels through the sand to reach the retreating water. Eventually, they abandoned their grounded boats, leaving rusting hulls on what had been the seabed. [caption id="attachment_56373" align="aligncenter" width="2048"] Abandoned boats on the former Aral Sea bed at Moynaq. Photo: Stephen M. Bland[/caption] The consequences differ across the former sea. In Kazakhstan, the Kokaral Dam...