Culture, Arts and Refugees

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Tiffany Fairey and Liz Orton, PhotoVoice

Location Visited

Glasgow

Trip Summary

Liz Orton and Tiffany Fairey travelled to Glasgow to meet Iseult Timmermans, project manager of Multi Story on February 6th 2008. The morning was spent discussing the project at the Street Works offices in central Glasgow. In the afternoon a visit was made to the YMCA Resource Centre on the Springdale Estate, where Multi Story workshops take place and a project office is being established.

Project Summary

Multi Story is collaborative arts and digital media project involving asylum seekers, refugees and artists in Glasgow. Collaborative artwork produced through regular and ongoing community based workshops is showcased on the website, www.multi-story.org. Local digital and photographic artists work with a range of refugee and asylum seeking groups, individuals and families, adults and young people. The project is an outreach education programme of Street Level PhotoWorks, Glasgow’s only photography gallery and centre. It has been running in various phases since 2002 with a funding from a range of sources from the Scottish Executive to European and arts funding. Current funding from Paul Hamlyn means the project is secure for another three years. The project was initiated and continues to be led by Iseult who works as both the project manager and as an arts facilitator. Lindsay Perth is employed as an artist in residence and she has also been involved with the project over a number of years leading on the website design and maintenance. Multi Story has partnered with a number of external agencies. The key partner is the YMCA where a project office is now being established on the Springdale Estate.

Multi Story was initiated in 2002 in an environment where asylum dispersal policies meant that large numbers of asylum seekers were being re-located and housed in vacant properties on Glaswegian estates. Refugees became a focal point of resentment in the local communities who were given no information or understanding of why, how or on what grounds the refugees were coming to Glasgow. Flats were stripped and burnt, refugees were subject to daily intimidation and regular violence.

Multi Story aimed to create collaborative artwork which could be used to combat this tension by raising awareness and understanding of the experiences of refugees in Glasgow. Initial workshops aimed to provide an emotional orientation for newly arrived asylum seekers, providing them with a creative process to help them stabilise and to break isolation. Out of these ongoing workshops in arts, computer skills, digital media and photography relationships were developed with individuals and small groups who chose to collaborate to create work aimed at raising awareness. This digital media based artwork was then featured on the Multi Story website and exhibitions were held on the estate, in Glasgow and in London.

The project is now entering a new phase having secured three year funding. Workshops are being developed with new groups including both refugee women’s groups and groups of local Scottish women. It is hoped that these women over time will start to produce collaborative work. Learning from the project to date is being incorporated into a re-vamped website which will have improved usability and will be marketed and promoted to a broader audience. Quarterly newsletters distributed across the estates are planned to draw in local audiences that do not have internet access. The project is also establishing a permanent community based office at the YMCA Resource Centre at Springdale.

Additional Points Discussed

• Project ‘language’ – discussion around how the project is pitched to audiences in relation to the language used on the website, Multi Story defines what it does as ‘collaborative’ art work and makes a conscious effort to not overly promote the work as ‘refugee’ labelled art

• Consultation with participants around how images are used publicly and on the website. Project stance on issues of copyright, consent and usage permissions. Multi Story does not make any images available to press and media that feature people’s faces.

• Issues around support, sustainability and maintaining relationships. Transient nature of many of the population they work with – many move on once their cases have been decided.

• Issues of image quality and artistic integrity. Question of prejudice in the art world against community based arts projects. Multi Story desire to produce high quality – appreciated for its artistic merits not social purpose.