Culture, Arts and Refugees
Contacts and useful resources
Useful Links
- United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees - www.unhcr.org
- UNHCR in the UK - www.unhcr.org.uk
- European Council on Refugees and Exiles - www.ecre.org
- Information Centre on Asylum Seekers and Refugees - www.icar.org.uk
- Refugee Week UK - www.refugeeweek.org.uk
- Refugee Council (England) - www.refugeecouncil.org.uk
- Welsh Refugee Council www.welshrefugeecouncil.org
- Scottish Refugee Council - www.scottishrefugeecouncil.org.uk
- Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities - www.nicem.org.uk
- Refugee Action - www.refugee-action.org.uk
- National Refugee Integration Forum - www.nrif.org.uk
- Border & Immigration Agency (Formerly Immigration and Nationality Department) - www.bia.homeoffice.gov.uk
- Arts Council England - www.artscouncil.org.uk
- Refugees and the Arts Initiative - www.artsinitiative.org.uk
- Greater Manchester Refugee Arts Partnership - www.can.uk.com/exodus/exodus_partners.htm
Baring Foundation profiles
Since 2004, the Baring Foundation has funded 29 organisations under the theme of Arts and Refugees. Creative Exchange has produced profiles of these organisations which can be viewed on the Baring Foundation website: http://www.baringfoundation.org.uk/artsgrants.htm
Recent projects
This list (ordered by project's name) indicates main organisation and contact details.
Art in the Community
Portsmouth City Council
Ongoing project using arts, media and publishing learning activities to engage with disadvantaged groups in deprived areas of the city.
Arts Work with Refugees & Asylum Seekers
Burton Street Project
Various ongoing projects involved with providing arts activities supported by skilled staff for people who face barriers accessing standard provision.
Between a Mountain and a Sea
Swansea Bay Asylum Seekers Support Group
Poems, fiction, drama and testimony – lament, plea, satire and celebration – by refugees and asylum seekers living in Wales. Includes two dozen refugee writers from as many countries. The aim is to let readers encounter asylum seekers and refugees as individuals, and to mix together newly arrived asylum seekers, refugees long since living in Wales, and established Welsh writers. Read the book online: click here.
Between Cultures
Independent Photography
www.independentphotography.org.uk
Between Cultures was a 2002 exhibition resulting from artist Anthony Lam’s exploration of his own practice in relation to issues of cultural heritage, colonial translocations and migration.
Breaking the Silence: Somali Women Speak Out
Exiled Writers Ink!
A powerful and emotional work of experimental interdisciplinary theatre especially created for Refugee Week by Exiled Writers Ink! with Somali Women from the Horn of Africa Women's Association. 2003
Broken Free
Tan Dance
Performance incorporating live music, dance and film with written material for the production developed with locally placed asylum seekers. 2003
Cardiff MAS Carnival
South Wales Intercultural Community Arts (SWICA)
Carnival parading through the streets of Cardiff, annually in Summer.
Colours of Hope
Roma Support Group
Book first published in 2003 celebrating young Roma growing up in Britain and the energy, talent and creativity that they are sharing with the wider community, enabling them to voice their concerns, hopes and dreams.
Creative Cultures
Action Space Mobile
Providing a range of workshops featuring arts and cultural activities, with an aim to nurture self-expression and build confidence amongst Barnsley’s refugees and asylum seekers.
Crossing Frontiers/The Bridge
B Arts
Two ongoing projects focussing not just on developing the skills and confidence of refugees and asylum seekers through arts and cultural activities, but also enabling them to build bridges into the local community.
Diogel/Safe
Small World Theatre
A drama/puppetry project working with schools in Wales to promote refugee integration and a positive climate for refugees and asylum seekers within host communities. 2003
Each For All & The Chicken in the Jungle
Oh! Art
Engaging Refugees & Asylum Seekers
National Museums Liverpool; Salford Museum & Art Gallery
www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk; www.salford.gov.uk/salfordmuseum
Ongoing project aiming to develop a range of events for asylum seekers and refugees, taking the form of informal learning opportunities or social activities developed with local refugee and asylum organisations. Its aim is to explore the contribution that museums and galleries can make to support refugees and asylum seekers.
Every Tree Has Its Roots
Refugee Action
Refugee Action worked with the Vietnamese community on an oral history project to document their experiences as refugees over more than 20 years. The project resulted in a book and archives and cultural activities between older and younger Vietnamese people. 2003
Flux
Context Theatre
Festival of performance with young people living in the Hackney area throughout August 2004.
Future & Fortune
Pan Centre for Intercultural Arts
Future and Fortune were the names given to two drama groups set up to give traumatised youngsters an opportunity to explore and voice their hopes, fears and frustrations with a system they sometimes found hard to comprehend and deal with, to help them develop communications skills, self-awareness and self-confidence, and to develop pride in their cultural heritage and their ability to create. 2004
A Gap in the Curtains
York Asylum 21
A collection of first hand stories from asylum seekers and refugees residing in York during 2003.
Hannah & Hanna
Company of Angels
Company of Angels fosters and produces new and experimental theatre for young audiences both by producing shows and by initiating innovative projects that directly involve young people. Having escaped from Kosovo, Hanna, 16 meets Hannah, 16, from Margate. An unlikely friendship develops when they find that music is a common bond between them despite their different cultures and circumstances. Company of Angels worked in partnership with Albanian Youth Action on the theme of ‘past and present’. 2001–2002
Home
Newham Sixth Form College
In Touch
Soft Touch Community Arts
Soft Touch works with groups of under represented people, principally aged 13-25, to enable them to express themselves using a range of arts based media.
Infusion
Sound It Out
A training and development programme for 8 exiled musicians (including refugees, asylum seekers and migrants) undertaken during 2006–2007. An evaluation of the Infusion project is available to download here.
Karibu
North Tyneside Art Studio
KARIBU is an ongoing arts programme for Africans in the North East, creating opportunities for people to play a part in the region’s cultural life and to address issues across the spectrum of education, employment, health, crime, and social exclusion.
Leave to Remain
Leave to Remain
Exhibition exploring and representing an experience of displacement through contemporary visual art. It provided visibility to contemporary visual artists who are refugees, asylum seekers, or have experienced a similar situation, and aimed to create new spaces for critical discussion concerning these matters. 2003
Migrant Voices
Banner Theatre
Based on collaborations with Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers and refugees in the West Midlands and Greater Manchester, Migrant Voices combined live performance and DVD technology. 2003–2006
Moving On
The Elements
The “Moving On Project” included free workshops and rehearsals, plus a performance of “Moving On” with professional performing artists, asylum seekers, refugees and other local residents, followed by a multicultural food and dance Party featuring Zuba, Capoeira, Waa Sylla, refugee musicians, and more. 2004
Music Life International
Community Music East (CME)
Others
Wolf + Water
A project that brought together local young ‘disaffected’ people & members of the local refugee community. These two groups met together to explore their common experience of being ‘other’ and from this challenging & intense work devised a hard hitting piece of theatre which gained standing ovations at the end of both performances. 2003
Pericles
Cardboard Citizens
A production of William Shakespeare’s Pericles involving refugees and asylum seekers, and actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company, which aimed to find modern resonances in the text that related to the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers. 2003
Puppets Overcoming Prejudice
Waterfront Community Centre, Ipswich
waterfrontcommunitycentre@btinternet.com
Introducing young people of mixed race or heritage to puppetry and use it a way of addressing issues and concerns relevant to them. 2001
Refugee Platform
Sound It Out
Refugee Platform was a series of interlinked initiatives with multiple objectives to enable refugee and asylum seekers who were professional world musicians to shadow British artists and gain workshop experience in community music, help refugee and asylum seeker music professionals into work through mentoring and introducing them to potential employers, and run music workshops with refugee and asylum seeker children and other young people to enable them to share their experiences and express themselves. 2003
The Saturday Club
ArtSites
Seeking Asylum
Bedford Creative Arts
www.bedfordcreativearts.org.uk
Photography exhibition by Diana Matar. 2002
Sighthill Festival
Strathclyde Police
Strathclyde Police organised a day of music, dance, sport and culture in the Sighthill area of Glasgow, where more than 1,000 people gathered for a multi-cultural festival aimed at improving relations between asylum seekers and their host community. 2001
Silchester Mews Drop In Centre
Dab Arts
Speaking in Other Tongues
Teitler, Nathalie (eds): Speaking in Other Tongues. London: Zero’s publishers, 2000
www.exiledwriters.co.uk
natteitler@aol.com
Strange Familiars Project
Project Phakama – London International Festival of Theatre
Project Phakama is a LIFT initiative led by young people across London, Southern Africa and India. Strange Familiars was devised and performed in 2003 by unaccompanied refugees and asylum seekers from Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East aged between 16 and 24 who have drawn on their individual experience and cultures to explore their lives in London today.
Summer Activity Programme
Community Music East (CME)
Project offering weekly music and dancing workshops for young refugees and asylum seekers. 2004
Transparency: Living Without Borders
Photovoice
Transparency worked throughout 2002–2003 with unaccompanied young refugees to provide refugees with a channel for expression, develop confidence and skills, and enable them to represent their views to the public through photography. Visit the Project Microsite here.
Uprooting Flowers
Angel Group
Voices
ArtLink ExChange
Voices was a programme of small community arts initiatives aimed to address community tensions in the city of Hull following the Bradford riots. It worked across a diversity of communities and groups using different cultural activities to address social inclusion, racism and develop community cohesion, tolerance and understanding.
Voices
Greenwich and Lewisham Young People's Theatre (GLYPT)
Voices is one of the most established arts and theatre programmes for young refugees and asylum seekers in South East London. Largely based in Greenwich and Lewisham, the project offers young people newly arrived in the UK the opportunity to take part in projects, both school based and also outside of educational contexts. Ongoing since 2003
The Washing Line of Wishes
Scottish Refugee Council
www.scottishrefugeecouncil.org.uk
A group of asylum seekers and refugees who currently live in Glasgow volunteered to devise this 2004 performance piece, which explores some of the issues that affect their everyday lives. The drama challenges discrimination and stereotyping. It examines issues of exclusion and loneliness. It encourages the audience to question their own preconceptions about what it means to be a refugee. Visit the Project Microsite here.
Welcome!
Photographers Gallery
Welcome! places pairs of photographers into schools to learn from and work with the ideas and experiences of refugee and asylum seeking students, as well as other students arriving mid-phase and members of each school's student council. Ongoing since 2001
A Woman's Place
Pillion Productions
Multimedia drama based on the experiences of the refugee women who also performed it. 2003
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