Culture, Arts and Refugees

July 2007 Session 2: Articulating and Communicating the Purpose and Impact of our Work

Facilitator – Dr Jill Rutter

Jill Rutter is a Senior Research Fellow in the Migration, Equalities and Citizenship Team at the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr), the UK’s leading progressive and independent think tank. Here she leads ippr’s work on the impact of migration on public service provision. Jill joined ippr in February 2007. Previously she lectured in education at London Metropolitan University and from 1988-2001 was a policy advisor at the Refugee Council, working with central and local government. She was educated at St Anne’s College, Oxford and the University of London, where her doctoral research examined refugee children’s differential educational progress. She has also conducted ethnographic research on Congolese and Somalis living in the UK. Her publications include Worlds on the Move: Educational and Social Welfare Responses to Changing Migration Patterns in the UK (Trentham Books, 2007) and Refugee Children in the UK (Open University Press, 2006).

Arts Projects and Refugees: Issues to Consider

Tension in our work between projects that aim to be therapeutic in relation to refugees, and those that aim to promote pro-asylum messages.
How do we relate to other migrant groups in our work?
How do we acknowledge the complexity of migration patterns and the asylum-migration nexus?
How do we avoid reinforcing difference in our portrayal of refugees?
How do we contribute to a recovering of the public sphere as a space where collective belongings and civic skills are formed?
How do we ensure that our interventions contribute to sustainable change in the institutions and communities where we work?