The 14-year-old Providence girl and the Egyptian teacher had plenty to learn from each other. They just didn’t know it yet.

Minutes of silence passed between the two strangers Monday morning as they embarked on a collaborative art project affiliated with Roger Williams University.

They were among 20 Middle Eastern teachers and 60 high school students who had come together to see how art can produce fabulous collaboration and how collaboration can produce great art.

A car-size, fiberglass sculpture rested on the floor nearby. Resembling a massive piece of dead coral, it awaited the group’s artistic impulses.

Arlis Rivas, an admittedly shy girl, sat with Ashraf Kamel. The two of them doodled on squares of muslin cloth — scraps of fabric that might, or might not, be pasted to the sculpture later in the day.

“We were drawing,” Kamel recalled afterward. “Not speaking so much. From the art, our drawing, we can make a very nice connection.”

It wasn’t long before Rivas learned that Kamel is both a teacher and a pediatrician. Kamel discovered that Rivas aspires to medicine.

“When I met him I thought he was so sweet and nice,” said Rivas, who regards her new friendship with the Egyptian as a triumph, given her own shyness.

It was the precise sort of cross-cultural connection that organizers had envisioned when they drew up the art project with help from Roger Williams and Woonsocket’s RiverzEdge Arts Project.

The initiative — orchestrated by a Cambridge-based academic institution, the University of the Middle East Project — aims to encourage the use of art as a catalyst for collaboration in classrooms from Providence to Cairo and beyond.

The sculpture that came together yesterday will be placed on the Roger Williams campus and dedicated at a ceremony on July 24. Meanwhile, organizers say Kamel and the other visitors will bring the same type of art to their countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Muslin from yesterday’s workshop will be applied to 26 oval-shaped forms which will be scattered around the Middle East and taken to New York, perhaps even to a display in the United Nations building.

Also, next year, 10 American teachers will reverse the exchange and travel to Morocco to work on collaborative art projects with youths in that country. The program is paid for with a $300,000 from the U.S. Department of State.

The initiative also fits in with the educational program at Roger Williams.

“We continually try to bridge the gap between cultures,” said the university’s president, Roy J. Nirschel, who serves on the board of directors for the University of the Middle East.

This isn’t the first collaborative art project in New England or Rhode Island.

The popular exhibit at Waterplace Park, a collection of ceramic tiles depicting individual schoolchildren’s feelings after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is another example of collaborative art.

One organizer of the project, Mark Cooper, a Boston College art professor, has been managing such initiatives for years.

Cooper, who had no involvement in that 9/11 project, aimed for an even higher degree of collaboration in yesterday’s effort.

The participants were divided into groups. They had to work together to choose the paint scheme for each square of muslin. No one was allowed his or her own square.

Cooper believes the physical, tangible aspects of picking colors, painting and sculpting can boost the value of an educational experience.

“The learning is more sustainable, more profound than just talking about it,” he said.

The art professor and author said he hasn’t managed a collaborative art project with this many participants, hailing from so many different countries, representing such diverse cultural backgrounds.

As the groups sorted their muslin squares and fixed them to the sculpture yesterday, there were few palpable signs of any tension related to the various wars raging in parts of the Middle East, including the U.S. war effort in Iraq.

Everyone, including the visitors, had agreed to set out in an effort to find common ground, according to Cooper and several other educators.

It appeared they had succeeded, although a few of the foreigners worried when they spotted reporters and photographers; they asked organizers to protect their identities.

Ray Matsumiya, director of the project’s U.S. offices, declined to name all of the countries represented by the visitors, recalling that one person returned home from a similar workshop years ago to find herself in danger. U.S. media coverage had tipped off some of her hometown critics, he said.

Despite such undercurrents, the atmosphere was open and free.

Robert Coveney, 14, of Woonsocket’s RiverzEdge program, felt quite alright drawing a cross to symbolize his Christianity.

He said he also drew a circle with a star inside it to depict compassion.

By the late afternoon, the tan-colored fiberglass sculpture was plastered with colorful imagery.

One of the Muslin squares was light blue.

The word Kamel was written across it. There were stick figures holding hands and the letters for D.R. They stood for the country of Rivas’s youth: the Dominican Republic.

They both stood next to each other, beaming and posing for a memorable picture.

mreynold@projo.com