Motif Art Studio is a small space for contemporary art practices, interactions and experimentation. It’s located in Samara refugee camp, southwest Algeria. The studio was established in 2016 over one full year of making (and breaking!). It was designed and built by Sahrawi artist Mohamed Sleiman Labat who constructed it entirely from discarded materials. The process of creating Motif Art Studio was a work of art by the artist. It’s also an experience meant to equip the artist with the skills, the knowledge and the energy to explore the potential of using art to create change, to experiment, to learn, to question but also to encourage creative responses to the different local environmental, social and political challenges facing the artist and his community in the Hamada Desert. The studio space includes a 6 × 6 meters of the physical studio, a large junkyard (Our gold mine of free material supplies!) as well as a newly established family garden to experiment with growing food as part of the studio practice. Following devastating floods that hit the camps in 2015, and for lack funding, Mohamed decided to utilize all the discarded materials of car parts, broken furnisher and the fabric of the old tents damaged in the flood to build the studio. Some discarded materials went into the studio frame, others into insulation, while some materials have actually went into making the tools with which the studio itself was built (Yes, we made our own tools to build the studio!). The Studio architectural design took inspiration from some design features of the current Sahrawi tent, which has four doors facing the different directions. This is a very practical feature in the desert. When the sandstorms blow from any direction, we can close the door facing that direction and open the opposite. Motif Art Studio is an experimental lab that aims to encourage contemporary art practices, research and knowledge production but with a philosophy of appreciation to the Sahrawi traditions and the desert oral knowledge. We believe that art is not for entertainment; art has a mission to get us to experience things in a way that helps us ask questions, solve problems, create abundance, team up with each other, learn from one another, and enjoy what we have been offered in this short journey we call life. More discussion on these issues can be found in our chapter A Temple of Art in the Middle of the Desert in Arts and Culture in Global Development Practice.