Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM) is a regional museum, art gallery and archives service, managing museums and galleries across Tyneside and the Archives for Tyne and Wear.
About the project
Multaka (which means ‘meeting point’ in Arabic) is an international network of museums designing programmes and participation relating to those with migration backgrounds. The programme here was devised to embed working strategies relating to lived experience of forced migration into local communities.
1589 TWAM | Source: Multaka North East
Project Context
Why did you create the project?
TWAM has engaged with Sanctuary Seekers and new arrivals since 2015 with its Home and Belonging programme at the Hatton Gallery, after being aproached by an anonymous donor to deliver a programme focusing on on volunteering programme by refugees and asylum seekers. This became the starting point for developing activity to refresh organisational goals, improve staff awareness and create a sustainable relationship with frontline organisations.
Local and national interest
The success of the pilot programme enabled TWAM to develop a funding bid to the Esmée Fairburn Foundation to build its offer. The organisation connected with the Multaka International Network and met with international partners regularly, working closely with Multaka Oxford collaborating in a talk at the Museums Association annual conference in 2023. The project team included lived experience volunteers comprehensively in its talks, seminars and conferences, in person, online or pre-recorded. On a national level this has led to other museums and galleries reaching out to discuss ways of working within their collections. Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums achieved the Museums of Sanctuary Award across all nine venues in 2023.
What community/communities are you working with or aiming to engage/increase participation with?
Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums has sites across four local authority areas. Museums created bespoke offers including volunteer and participation opportunities according to the needs of the different collaborative communities.
1589 TWAM | Source: Multaka North East
Goals
The project’s goal was to create sustainable relationships with frontline organisations supporting refugee and asylum seeker communities; developing TWAM staff, and building awareness through training delivered by the West End Refugee Service, anti-racist and trauma-informed practice training, with input from the International Rescue Committee.
Source: Multaka North East
Participatory considerations, practices and outcomes
The project team had links with Newcastle City of Sanctuary Network, widening the project’s networks and visibility while enabling direct consultation with respect to direct referrals via Local Authority Asylum Liason Officers (LASLO) teams.
As the programme developed, word of mouth helped the programme’s reputation as a safe and welcoming space. The organisation developed intercultural dialogue, celebrated skills and knowledge, in multiple languages, with relevant partnerships informing on safeguarding and enabling bespoke trauma-informed work. Museums provided a focus of shared interest through a community of interest, friendship, with regular reflection sessions and one-to-one support; this fed into the recruitment of a museum Advisory Group, steering work for Refugee Week, producing a city-wide approach shared in a publication widely shared with relevant partner organisations. One-off evaluation sessions worked productively to reflect and review the programme.
An Instagram account was developed so the volunteers could share their achievements, safely. Posts were also turned into postcards for volunteers to promote their work. Whatsapp for volunteers was the preferred and only successful way of engaging and increased attendance above texting and emails. A set of rules was created around using the platforms and translated into key languages.
Source: Multaka North East
Reflections
Many Multaka volunteers went on to other volunteering opportunities within the museums and promoted these within wider communities.
In other regions, some organisations were less confident in attending independently; this was overcome with either collecting groups or staff accompanying people. These partnerships took time and required consistent building of trust with participants. Travel cost are a major barrier to any engagement as an audience member, participant or volunteer. This is further impacted by many organisation going cashless. A lack of resource in this area restricts attendance to those within walking distance to venues. Changing ESOL timetables require flexibility, and a specific lead around maintaining and co-ordinating relationships and programme offers in Newcastle.
This research project aimed to investigate the relationships between care, inequalities and wellbeing among different generations of transnational families in the UK, Spain, France and Sweden. ‘Transnational families’ can be defined as familial groups where one or more family members spend all or most of their time geographically separated from each other across borders, but nevertheless share a collective sense of connection as a ‘family’. We worked with different generations of transnational families that encompassed, diverse ethnicities, care needs and legal status, including refugees and asylum-seekers and other displaced people.
Using a multi-sited, family-focused participatory action research methodology, we worked with partner organisations to train and support migrant community researchers to undertake research with transnational families, building trust and capacity within communities. Community researchers and academic teams conducted interviews, participatory diagramming and other activities with 122 transnational families (UK: 25, Sweden: 40, Spain: 23, France: 29 families). In most families, we engaged with two or three different generations, including children and members living in countries of origin/other countries.
Participatory approaches to data analysis and dissemination provide opportunities for marginalised groups to prioritise findings and engage in policy dialogue. Participatory workshops used a range of creative methods to discuss key themes, rank priorities and co-produce accessible outputs. For example:
in the UK, we worked with families and with Rank and File Theatre performers with lived experience of forced displacement and disability to co-produce participatory theatre and films. Scenarios focused on the challenges families faced and the changes to policy and practice they would like to see to improve their lives.
in France, researchers and filmmakers collaborated closely with two transnational families to co-produce ethnographic documentary films about their lives.
in Spain, photovoice methods were used with five community researchers to capture transnational caring practices and co-produce a photovoice collage and video.
in Sweden, short films were produced with community researchers about families’ experiences to inform practitioners.
Goals and benefits
Training and supporting refugees and other migrants to interview and do participatory activities their peers can provide access to rich ‘insider knowledge’ through refugee and minority ethnic community networks which may not be available to academic researchers who lack a shared cultural background or experience of migration/displacement. We wanted to ensure that the research was accessible to transnational families from diverse ethnicities who were able to participate in their first or preferred language. We therefore recruited community researchers who spoke one or more minority languages and were able to draw on their linguistic minority ethnic community networks to recruit potential participants.
Speaking in their first language put participants at ease. This enabled the project to reach a wider diversity of linguistic and cultural groups without the need to use interpreters in interview settings, which can disrupt the conversation and necessitate cultural mediation when academic researchers are from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
Using qualitative approaches to research family lives also poses challenges due to the difficulty of gaining access to ‘private’ family spaces. Community researchers were successful in reaching family members of different generations which was a key requirement of our project, including children and those living in country of origin or third countries (who were interviewed in most cases via videocalls). They were able to navigate the sensitivities of the intimate sphere of families where there were particular care needs, given pre-existing relationships of trust and awareness of gender and other cultural norms.
Figure 1: Circles of care activity completed by a grandmother from Morocco with the support of a community researcher in the UK | Source: University of Reading
Community researchers benefited personally in terms of developing their work experience and skills and enhancing their future employability. It was important to ensure they received certificates of the training and research tasks undertaken. Local refugee and other community organisations and the wider community also benefit from their knowledge and experience and the potential to involve them in future research and community action projects.
There were also many benefits for the research team of working with community researchers over a longer period, such as by employing them to transcribe and translate interviews into English/ French/ Spanish/Swedish. This gives a richer understanding of the data through shared meanings developed in the interview setting than would be produced by an external translator. Community researchers also supported families’ participation in prioritising findings and engaging with policy dialogue, thus counteracting marginalisation dynamics and enabling them to see how the research could help lead to social change.
Reflections and challenges
There are important issues to consider in the dynamics of establishing the research team and whether and how to involve community organisations. In the UK, community researchers were recruited and employed part-time through third sector organisations which also received a budget for practitioners’ time to support the community researchers’ involvement in the project. However, such arrangements may create tensions and hierarchies in line management between practitioners and academic researchers due to the fact that community researchers become ‘employees’ of third sector organisations. There may also complexities due to the way a group of community researchers may be ‘assembled’ because of a specific research project and due to sampling requirements, rather than being a pre-existing unified group with common goals, which may work better in terms of on-going peer support and team dynamics to sustain participation over the course of the project.
Conducting research with people of different ages, including children, and using with different participatory methods, adds complexity to the training that community researchers require, and the ongoing support needed throughout the fieldwork and beyond. Safeguarding training for working with children and vulnerable adults was provided by a national provider for community researchers and the academic team prior to undertaking fieldwork. Community researchers in the UK found it sometimes difficult to negotiate consent to interview three generations within families and it took a long time to find families who were happy for us to also interview a family member living in other countries, particularly where there were concerns about the political situation and the privacy of online calls. Some community researchers with less experience of working with children also found it challenging to interview the children in the family, but found using less talk-centred methods such as participatory diaries or drawings helped to understand their experiences.
Community researchers may also face situations of emotional distress when interviewing or collecting data from families facing significant difficulties due to chronic illness, disability, bereavement or forced displacement. Community researchers found it difficult to withdraw from families’ lives – after the interview, family participants often called and wanted emotional support or advice, having shared the challenges they faced in an intimate interview setting and remaining part of the family’s wider support network. Acknowledging the difficulty of separating the research role from community researchers’ roles as members of the community and the need to manage expectations is an important part of the ethical training and support that the research team should provide prior to fieldwork.
Furthermore, opportunities to debrief regularly with academic researchers, practitioners, peer community researchers and/or counsellors if required, is of utmost importance to ensure the wellbeing of participants, community researchers and academic researchers. An allowance for counselling sessions with culturally appropriate practitioners with experience of supporting clients with forced displacement backgrounds should be included in the budget from the outset.
There are also significant ethical issues that need to be considered when doing in-depth research with different family members, some of whom are not living locally but in countries of origin or other countries. Safeguarding protocols are normally based on local/national guidelines and systems. So, it may not be possible to support family members in other countries without similar legislation or infrastructure, or those living in refugee camps or areas of conflict.
Time and resource constraints are also significant considerations when using participatory action methods with marginalised groups. The considerable time investment needed from community researchers and family participants who are carers, as well as of theatre performers, practitioners and the research team needs to be acknowledged and allocated sufficient budget at the project design stage. This includes the training and ongoing support that may be needed, as well as resources to support participants’ and performers’ involvement across different stages of the project. Recognition is also needed of the financial, emotional and caring pressures that participants, community researchers and performers may face, which may make it difficult for them to sustain their involvement over a longer period.
Figure 2: Theatre of the Oppressed workshop with Rank & File Theatre and family participants in the UK | Source: University of Reading
The academic team often experienced tensions between the research requirements and a desire to facilitate a more fully participatory action research and creative process that was guided by the perspectives and concerns of family participants, community researchers and performers. Particular challenges were centred on:
in the Theatre of the Oppressed approach in the UK, creating space for actors with lived experience and family participants to improvise and co-develop family scenarios and imagine solutions, while keeping the focus on the key research findings and policy realities, in order to produce outputs that had the potential to inform policy and practice;
the need to recruit family participants of different generations and with family members in other countries in order to meet the requirements of the sample;
the extent to which community researchers were involved in designing/ refining the interview questions and other research tools to gather data that would address the research questions.
Ruth Evans (University of Reading), Rosa Mas Giralt (University of Leeds), Grady Walker (University of Reading)
The research project, Care, Inequality and Wellbeing in Transnational Families in Europe: a comparative, intergenerational study in Spain, France, Sweden and UK (2021-2024) was funded through the JPI More Years, Better Lives, Equality and Wellbeing across Generations, including Economic and Social Research Council [Grant Ref. ES/W001527/1].
This project – funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust and conducted in May 2024 – draws on University of Sussex research into the politics of recognition in relation to solidarity and solidarity fatigue in relation to contemporary displacement within Europe in relation to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Solidarity has long been of interest to social scientists, but the phenomenon of solidarity fatigue – as opposed to compassion fatigue – has received significantly less academic attention. Building on the prominent political justifications of solidarity fatigue in central and Eastern European media in the wake of the conflict in February 2022, solidarity fatigue might be manifested and expressed in different ways to contextualise different justificatory articulatory strategies, in the light of negotiations around differing values between those offering solidarity and those receiving it.
In order to understand how and where such solidarities might have occurred or otherwise across the cities in question, the project team employed object elicitation, photography and participatory map-making activities across the two workshops in Berlin and Warsaw in order to further understand how and why Ukrainian women feel recognised or not within the cities in which they now live. The work was supported by NGOs in the two cities including Miodrag Kuč at the centre for urbanism ZK/U in Berlin, and Marek Troszyński at Collegium Civitas, and staff at Ukraiiński Dom in Warsaw.
Goals
The workshop’s aim was to explore the ways in which participants felt recognised or misrecognised within the cities to which they had been displaced. Elena and Dasha have significant experience of running participatory workshops as part of their practice Architectures of Emergency. The aim for the workshops was that by using map-making, object elicitation and walking activities, dimensions of recognition in relation to participants’ sense of belonging or unbelonging in their host cities might be co-produced. Participants were paid for their time, with the workshops subject to Sussex’s full ethics processes regarding best practice, including use of data and consent. The workshops were held in Ukrainian.
Participatory considerations and practices
The workshops were structured into four distinct stages, each designed with activities to guide the participants through a process of introspection, connection, and expression. These included exercises on personal belongings, city mapping, city walk and photo collection. With the first part’s focus on personal belongings, participants shared items that, at first glance, seemed ordinary — spoons, patches, matches, dog items, a flag, books, a taekwondo belt, and even a negligé. Yet, each item carried a story, often tied to the themes of war and evacuation. For instance, one participant shared a spoon, part of their ‘anxiety suitcase,’ while another held keys from their apartment in Ukraine and a ruler to plan the renovation works in that apartment, reminders of the life they left behind.
Many of the items shown were still connected to Ukraine, despite the participants having been displaced for over two years. Some carried passports, ID cards, COVID masks, and even medication for stomach spasms — a physical manifestation of stress and trauma. What struck us most during this part of the workshop was how the group dynamics evolved. Initially, the participants were reserved, sharing their stories in a formal manner. However, within the first hour, a transformation occurred—they began to open up, speaking with a level of honesty and vulnerability that was deeply moving. It was as if the act of sharing these personal objects unlocked a flood of emotions and memories, turning the workshop into a space of collective healing. It was interesting to see these items from ‘the previous life’ in new circumstances.
The second part of the workshop focused on city-scale mapping, where participants identified locations of recognition and significance in their new cities. This exercise highlighted their adaptation to their new environments, and also their connection to their past. In both Berlin and Warsaw, participants were attached to the green spaces — parks, bodies of water, and nature. This preference for natural environments also reflected a need for tranquility. Another significant part of the story was places of transit, like train stations, refugee temporary camps, and document processing centres, administrations of different kinds.
Apart from these places, usually perceived with tension, we saw a lot of green (positive) marks on the urban texture that we mapped, symbolising grades of acceptance and well-being in new places. People enjoyed their neighbourhoods and admired decentralisation and community ways of living, a strong contrast to their experiences in Ukraine, where public spaces and interacting with others often felt uneasy. In both cities, the questions of history and heritage arose. In Warsaw, the reconstruction after World War II served as a parallel to Ukraine’s current situation, offering hope that their homeland, too, could rise from the ashes of war. In Berlin, the scars of the Second World War and the Cold War were visible and constantly caught the attention of group members.
During the third stage, participants engaged in a walk on their own or in a smaller group, and a botanical collection, exploring local neighbourhoods on a smaller scale. One participant remarked, ‘just walking quietly on a Monday is a luxury,’ highlighting the simple pleasures they could now engage in. The exercise allowed them to see their neighbourhoods in a new light, noticing details they had previously overlooked. They collected pieces of plants (often they chose plants they were familiar with at home and that matched). One woman saw a flower of a peony, which was strongly connected to her mother and shared a touching story about her. Another task was taking photos – as many as possible.
This final stage involved participants selecting five images from their phones to form a photo expression. The themes varied—from the greyness of the cityscape to the vibrant colours of nature. Even the names of the series were poetic: ‘Something out of context’, ‘Sky, Bees/city/people’, ‘Red colour’, ‘Happiness is in little things’, ‘Spring colours of Warsaw’, ‘Try to be happy where you are’ – in this grey colour… the photos reflected a blend of dislocation and adaptation, with images of skies, architecture, and everyday scenes, and the narrative behind them was resilience and hope, finding joy despite the challenges being faced.
Source: University of Sussex
Project outcomes
In Warsaw the participants explored the significance of objects they carried with them day-to-day. One woman described carrying two items from their Kyiv apartment, including a measuring tape to remember their ‘past life’. ‘It’s like a good-luck charm,’ they said. Those attending relayed the experience of leaving, describing how they initially packed every essential document out of fear but now carry things more symbolically: ‘We don’t know how to be carefree about this. Everything must be kept together.’ Even though they don’t need items like a Ukrainian passport or driver’s licence anymore, some participants still carry them.
Regarding the mapping activities, the farmers’ protests in Poland have contributed to feelings of anxiety and insecurity in the city centre of Warsaw, and this was indicated through the participants’ mapping. Train stations like Warszawa Wschodnia carry emotional weight as places of farewells and transit. Parks, however, were perceived as symbols of order and comfort.
One participant reflected on settling in Warsaw, and living for six months without unpacking. ‘Finding an apartment took a long time—I was literally begging to finally have a normal place to live.’ They highlighted Warsaw’s rebuilding after its destruction in the Second World War: ‘The people of Warsaw decided—they would rebuild.’ They admire how Polish society engages with history through events like Holocaust Memorial Day, contrasting this with how Soviet-style commemorations felt forced in Ukraine: ‘Here, no one forces anyone…! People organise these events themselves.’
In Berlin, participants identified strongly with Lankwitz in Steglitz-Zehlendorf, a district in southwest Berlin where the Ukrainian community have settled: ‘All these dots you see – my mom lived there for many years… We all practically live on the same street.’ They describe this area as a place of stability and connection, with the Ukrainian center NEST providing a sense of home.
Source: University of Sussex
Tegel Airport holds complex emotional weight as one of the main entry points for Ukrainian refugees: ‘Without Tegel, you couldn’t stay in Berlin.’ Registration for refugee status was initially processed there, but the situation has become problematic. One participant described overcrowding and human rights violations. Despite efforts from Ukrainian political leaders and the embassy to address the situation, the conditions remain dire, with injured Ukrainian soldiers among those without support. The participant contrasted their growing sense of belonging in certain areas with the systemic issues refugees face. Their reflections highlighted the tension between finding stability in a new city and an ongoing struggle for recognition.
Another speaker stayed one night in a hotel near the train station, feeling lost and confused: ‘We just arrived at the train station, not really understanding how the maps worked.’ However, they quickly secured an apartment in Charlottenburg near the palace, where they found their first sense of calm: ‘That was the first place where we experienced a sense of peace and tranquility.’ Now settled in Alt-Tegel, the speaker describes finding a true sense of peace. The speaker contrasts Berlin’s natural spaces with what they missed in Kyiv, appreciating the German focus on maintaining green spaces: ‘It feels like there’s a real interest and priority in maintaining that connection with nature.’
Reflections
Elena will continue her participatory map-making activities in Kyiv Oblast in June 2025, as part of the project with two main strands: piloting and researching participatory digital map-making and mapping community reconstruction sites overlooked by mainstream platforms, including those funded by INGOs. This community-led work builds on past mapping of environmental damage and debris removal. A digital map of these sites will be displayed at Sussex’s Digital Humanities Lab, and various Kyiv institutions. Researchers will also interview participants and activists about digital mapping, algorithmic search, and AI imagery, informing a future AHRC/ESRC bid, and continuing to develop participatory mapping as a critical response to crises of belonging and misrecognition across different urban environments.
This project addresses urgent questions at the intersection of urban communication, post-conflict recovery, and digital representation. By centring community agency in mapping reconstruction efforts, the project challenges dominant, externally-driven narratives about Ukraine’s built environment and foregrounds local knowledge in urban recovery. The research also critically evaluates how digital platforms and AI-driven tools mediate visibility and power in crisis contexts, contributing to scholarship on media infrastructures, civic participation, and spatial justice.
The Centre for the Cultural History of War (University of Manchester) brings together academics, early career researchers and research-led teaching. Research focuses on cultural responses to war, conflict and the Holocaust; humanitarianism; memory and commemoration; childhood and youth; heroes and heroism; refugees; exhibitions, visual artists and cultural representations.
About the project
The project aimed to understand how and in what forms ‘displacement aesthetics’ emerged in response to the Second World War and its aftermath, especially in art and craft practices, exhibitions and museums, and UN-sponsored cultural work. Challenging the patterns and practices of ‘displacement aesthetics’, the project also turned to work with artists in the contemporary art sphere. It sought to amplify the voices of creative people from backgrounds of displacement. It also examined how they offer new ways of seeing not necessarily defined by or confined to the performance of refugeedom or the experience of displacement. An important feature of this work was to apprehend the intersectional and career barriers that many artists encounter in their new home. The project generated collaborative and co-curatorial opportunities for practitioners to have a stronger presence and creative impact in the arts industry and in shaping the interpretation of collections that would have a long-term legacy in the artworld.
Project context
The project had 3 strands that connected the past:
Historical and Contemporary Forms of ‘Displacement Aesthetics’ with present day contexts in the art industry and in artists’ careers. Visualisations of forced displacement, the cultural figure of ‘the refugee’ as it emerged in the first half of the 20th century, and conditions of refugeedom lasting into the present-day.
Art-Making and Art Galleries – examining local and international art collections and artistic practices, and their interventions into ‘displacement aesthetics’. By partnering with Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth Art Gallery, the project sought to make curatorial and infrastructural changes in the art institution by collaborating with artists from backgrounds of displacement and creating opportunities for career development and decision-making.
Artists Careers – as leaders and experts but not as participants – increasing opportunities for careers, and for their expertise to be heard and meaningfully impacting in an institutional setting. E.g. a creative and social entrepreneur programme for artists and curators (delivered by arts NGO In Place of War (IPOW)); leading to collaborative work on collections research and developing a suite of activities with artists and producers, including art-making, co-curation, advisory and leadership roles, and major and permanent intervention in a gallery space as well as a temporary exhibition. The project recognised lived experience as expertise and integrated that knowledge into museum infrastructures for future users of collections.
Goals: Rethinking the Grand Tour & Traces of Displacement
Create a platform for artists from backgrounds of refugeedom to actively engage with historical and contemporary artworks.
Enable artists to challenge dominant narratives and contribute new interpretations of displacement and migration.
Empowerment Through Artistic Expression and Leadership
Led by four facilitators, guiding artists to develop creative responses that were exhibited alongside existing collections.
Support agency by enabling artists to control and shape how their experiences and perspectives were represented in the gallery space eg language used; design.
Encouraged artistic autonomy, empowering individuals to see their lived experiences as valuable contributions to the art world.
Rethinking the Grand Tour – Manchester Art Gallery
Examined colonial and exclusionary histories within the Grand Tour concept through a critical lens.
Enable artists to reinterpret and reconstruct narratives, adding personal and collective histories to the conversation.
Resulted in the exhibition of newly created expressions that directly responded to existing works in the collection.
Traces of Displacement – Whitworth Art Gallery
Established a focus group of community leaders from diverse backgrounds to explore the representations of displacement in art.
Developed multi-layered responses to artworks, providing visitors with deeper, more nuanced ways to engage with the exhibition.
Shifted audience perception by integrating reflections from the displaced communities, making the exhibition more interactive and thought-provoking.
Redefined how visitors interact with exhibitions—moving beyond passive viewing to immersive engagement.
Encouraged audiences to not only see the artwork but also reflect on the lived experiences that shaped responses to them.
Introduced a new curatorial approach where exhibitions evolve through dialogue with the communities they represent.
Created legacies that integrate new knowledge of experts into the gallery infrastructure such as databases, where that knowledge is now freely available to the public and to future curators.
Image from the video art ‘The Golden Persian Phoenix’ by Mahboobeh Rajabi, a creative response to the Persian sash as part of the Traces of Displacement exhibition. Persian Sash (Silk, gold and silver thread, The Whitworth, University of Manchester). Mahboobeh Rajabi, Golden Persian Phoenix (2023 Video, 01:54 min).
Participatory considerations and practices
In both Rethinking the Grand Tour and Traces of Displacement, the projects were deeply rooted in lived experience, ensuring that voices from forced migration backgrounds shaped their narratives.
For Rethinking the Grand Tour, four lead artists, all from forced migration backgrounds, worked collaboratively to reinterpret the historical Grand Tour through the lens of displacement and migration. Their lived experiences played a vital role in shaping the exhibition, bringing new perspectives to the collection and challenging traditional narratives. The project actively involved refugee and asylum seeker artists, who contributed their own interpretations and responses, ensuring their voices were heard throughout the process. The exhibition was not just a reconsideration of history but a powerful act of reclaiming space within Manchester Art Gallery’s collection.
In Traces of Displacement at the Whitworth Art Gallery, a focus group of creative artists and community leaders from diverse backgrounds of displacement conducted collections research, provided reinterpretation narratives of the objects selected for display, and also generated new information that augmented the database for future users and curatorial projects. In workshops, their discussions extended beyond analyzing existing works; they actively created responses, offering new ways of understanding displacement from personal and wider perspectives. Through collaboration and co-curation processes over a long period of time, where genuine trust and relationship-building is created, the groups agreed that even using the term participation or ‘participant’ underscores inequalities and power differentials that need to be overcome and challenged. Therefore, the language and approach shifted from the initial ‘focus group’ in an advisory role to emphasise the agency of co-curators. Power-sharing, we learned, needs to advance opportunities for artists and producers to undertake more responsibility in leadership roles, which also requires flexibility across institutions. The role of the cultural producers with lived experience was essential in the two exhibition projects. The diversity of researchers and co-curators ensured that when visitors experienced the exhibition, they encountered multiple perspectives, prompting them to reflect on their own interpretations of displacement and its historical and contemporary significance.
Both projects centred the voices of those with lived experience, ensuring that forced migration narratives were not only included but integral to shaping the exhibitions’ meaning and impact. Making artistic responses to the collection was also a major way of artistic voices providing new ways of understanding the historic tropes of displacement that lurk in the collection.
Project outcomes
For the artists, several outcomes included being issued a Certificate of the CASE Programme, which is validated by Manchester University. Registering CICs e.g. DIPACT and Black Futures. Building Confidence to take the next steps in career paths. Gaining more opportunities; having work publicised and elevated in a major gallery space.
Other artists were inspired by the work – there were also public programmes associated with both projects including with schools, disability groups, and migrant groups, and open-call public education events led by the artists in the gallery space. Creating a model of collaboration that connects artists to institutions and enables them to have their voices embedded in a research project. Bringing often marginalised and isolated displaced artists into a system that frequently only wants to engage with them in Refugee Week, and for the rest of the time relegates them to the margins. Both galleries – Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth Art Gallery – were awarded City of Sanctuary Awards due to a body of work including these collaborations, which recognises organisations that go above and beyond to welcome people seeking sanctuary.
Reflections
The success of the collaborative work (we do not use the term participatory or participant as our diverse group rejected that term) in Rethinking the Grand Tour and Traces of Displacement was evident in how deeply the lived experiences of people from forced migration backgrounds shaped the exhibitions. The engagement of lead artists with forced migration backgrounds ensured that the narratives presented were not only authentic but also challenged traditional perspectives. The involvement of art leaders in the interpretation process created a layered, evolving dialogue that extended beyond the exhibitions themselves.
However, challenges emerged, particularly in terms of access to collections and the time and resources that conservation require to make mining the collection work for both the institution and the co-curators. The depth of engagement required for such collaborative work often exceeded the available project timelines and staffing needs, making it difficult to explore certain narratives and objects as fully as they deserved. However this very problematic became the source of two artistic interventions, which remain on the gallery wall. This enabled a legacy and public discussion to engage with issues of colonialism and extractivist histories as well as wider issues of who collections are for and how they should be made available in the future, thus enabling a conversation around the globally, nationally and locally recognised attempt to decolonise collections and museums. Additionally, sustained funding and institutional support are crucial for ensuring that projects like these are not one-off initiatives but ongoing efforts to engage refugees and asylum seekers in cultural spaces.
Funding is also needed for artists to be able to educate the gallery going public on how and why change is made in the gallery system, but also in how the redisplay and reinterpretation of the canon of European art history through the lens of migration will enhance their knowledge of history and the present day.
Looking to the future
Looking ahead, the continuation of such projects is vital. Providing more opportunities for artists and collaborators from forced migration backgrounds to lead and shape cultural narratives will not only enrich public understanding but also create real change. If more time and resources were available, further development of these collaborative models—through extended workshops, deeper community engagement, and long-term collaborations—would enhance their impact and ensure a lasting shift in representation within galleries and museums.
Additional reflections
Both Rethinking the Grand Tour and Traces of Displacement were groundbreaking in their approach, not only engaging creatives and communities from forced migration backgrounds but also positioning them as leaders in shaping institutional narratives. These projects went beyond participation but involved real and genuine collaboration—they actively shifted power dynamics, placing artists with lived experience in leadership roles where they could influence the way history and displacement are represented in cultural spaces.
One of the most significant outcomes was the impact on institutional structures. By centering forced migration narratives within Manchester Art Gallery and Whitworth Art Gallery, these projects contributed to a deeper and more meaningful shift in how institutions engage with communities. This wasn’t just about representation; it was about structural change—creating spaces where refugees and asylum seekers are not just subjects of exhibitions but are the ones leading, curating, and driving the discourse.
Furthermore, these projects demonstrated the power of visual art as a tool for reinterpreting history and amplifying voices that have often been marginalized. They fostered meaningful collaborations between artists, institutions, and communities, proving that collaboration when done with intentionality and leadership from those with lived experience, can create lasting change.
The success of these projects highlights the need for more sustained opportunities of this kind. Moving forward, it is essential that cultural institutions continue to create leadership roles for artists from forced migration backgrounds, such as in being hired as consultants, producers, and community curators, ensuring that their voices are not only included but are central to shaping the future of arts and heritage.
About The History of Science Museum and Pitt Rivers Museum
The History of Science Museum and Pitt Rivers Museum are part of Oxford University Gardens, Libraries and Museums (GLAM) Division. The History of Science Museum is the oldest purpose-built museum that remains open to the public. Its collection focuses on historical scientific instruments, including over 75 astrolabes – the largest collection in the world. The Pitt Rivers Museum is dedicated to ethnography and anthropology, housing a collection of over 500,000 objects, photographs, and manuscripts.
About the project
Multaka Oxford focuses on the social role of museums and their collections to create platforms for intercultural dialogue through the mutual sharing of art, science and culture. The project works collaboratively with people who are settling in Oxfordshire. Its activities generate spaces for belonging and place-making, alongside opportunities for people to share their knowledge and skills within the cultural landscape through museums and within communities.
Project context
The project was originally created by the two museum directors (Silke Ackermann and Laura van Broekhoven) and a community engagement officer (Nicola Bird) working with Oxford communities, including those settling in Oxford through forced displacement. Their goal was to explore different social roles of the two aforementioned museums and to highlight knowledge and experience within local communities, knowing their contributions would bring richer, more accurate, and representative interpretation and ways of engaging with collections. The project was first awarded funding in 2017, to create a place of welcome and skills development for those fleeing the war in Syria.
Originally, the project sought to challenge negative stereotypes around people seeking refuge and asylum and to create connection with cultural heritage. This included engagement with Oxford’s diverse communities to demonstrate migration’s positive societal influence. Within the museum, by taking a person-led collaborative approach, the project was able to highlight the knowledge, skills and experiences a more inclusive approach brought to heritage; to reframe the role of museums; and to approach collection interpretation and museum engagement more inclusively and representatively.
The current goals of the Multaka Oxford project are to:
1. Bring communities together to strengthen understanding and stimulate dialogue through the mutual sharing of art, culture and science.
2. Support and enable volunteers to share and develop skills to enrich their lives and open new opportunities for their futures.
3. Deepen understanding and interpretation of artefacts from the Islamic world and beyond within the heritage sector and our communities, locally and globally.
4. Honour their responsibility as a museum to our communities through engagement and sharing of collections.
Source: Multaka Oxford
Participatory considerations and practices
The project envisions objects and spaces of cultural heritage as playing a significant role of welcome, belonging and identity as people settle into local communities. From the outset, the project team responded to the feedback including from those arriving through the government resettlement programme, Oxford’s diverse communities, community partners and those seeking asylum in the UK. The project embraced a co-creative approach. It looked at who should be paid – creating new roles called Community Connectors – and who would engage as volunteers. It listened to what volunteers needed if they were volunteering to ensure mutual benefit was at the heart of the project so people grew equitably as they developed the project together. The project avoids the initiative being a ‘service’ model and, instead, creates a community that collaborates to co-produce.
Paid team members are responsible for providing structure, safeguarding and processes for the programme within the two museums and within different networks. Paid team members work together when co-planning and co-producing the activities, displays, projects, workshops and presentations. Everyone is encouraged to participate as opposed to a traditional facilitator/participant interaction. To enable this, the project takes an inclusive approach to recruitment to ensure diverse representation, lived experiences and encourages everyone to bring varied perspectives and knowledge into the core planning and creation of the project’s outputs.
The project takes a person-led approach, prioritising people’s experiences and wellbeing. The Multaka team has a social programme that brings people together to connect without expectation of deliverables. This usually happens somewhere like a university college, library, garden or arboretum as the project tries to utilise the university’s spaces and resources. In addition, paid team members will write references for jobs and asylum cases, as well as support with CV and personal statement writing.
Project outcomes
This is a long-term project with many ongoing outcomes but the project team is gathering evidence based on the following:
Creating change within the institution: The project tries to address the colonial narratives in its museums and aims to make museums more accessible, inclusive, relevant and meaningful. The project demonstrates and evidences change. It creates a place of trust where staff and volunteers explore possibilities. This helps staff and colleagues in the organisation and sector create models on how to work more equitably. It has also shown organisations how it cares and prioritises the wellbeing of staff and team members who are working with people who may have experienced trauma. This is through a programme of supervision for all staff and signposting to counselling services.
Confidence: confidence is highlighted by volunteers and comes from a programme which is outside volunteers’ accommodation and is part of places of cultural significance. Joining the programme can be the first time people navigate local public transport in the UK, enter these spaces (university and museums), and/or take part in regular activity outside of college/home office visits. Volunteers are encouraged to present their ideas to others, plan and deliver as part of a team and see the outcomes of their ideas, research, designs, and plans. These outcomes are highly valued by the organisation, its staff and members of the public. The bigger picture of their work is consistently communicated and shared.
Source: Multaka Oxford
Reflections
The objects, collections and museum spaces enable inter-cultural exchange through collaboration; smaller volunteer teams move from discussion to activities that can be shared with wider audiences. Multaka team of staff and volunteers have the potential connect with a huge diversity of audiences within the general public. Not only does it collaborate with members in Oxford’s diverse community, but the project also creates changes within the museums’ spaces, structures and teams.
However, one area of development is embedding practices into the ‘core’ working activities of a museum. More co-creative, collaborative and inclusive practice remains the most challenging aspect of the work.
Looking to the future
The project has two years of funding remaining. Over this time, it aims to provide clear pathways into the project for people who are interested and want to access volunteering.
Multaka at the Pitt Rivers Museum is looking into creating ‘meeting points’ in the permanent gallery to provide a clear legacy for the museum sector and demonstrate how enriching knowledge and skills can contribute to historical institutions including the University of Oxford.
At the History of Science Museum, Multaka supports opportunities to explore connections between people, science, art and belief, involving volunteers in its redevelopment plans. The project team are also partnering with departments, colleges and student societies to co-create programmes that promote cultural diplomacy, collectively benefitting volunteers, students and the institutions. The project has outreach groups to enable people to connect with their community and develop methods of belonging to their hometown.
Finally, the project is building on its young people in Cultural Club (ages 16-24) to enable young adults to add their perspectives and experiences into museum venues and the Multaka project. Many are young people seeking asylum or refugees, who value activities during school holidays and weekends which can otherwise feel isolating. As the project develops this strand of work, its goal is to offer these young individuals more significant roles in the museum, seeing them as key contributor and creator in these spaces.
The project will continue to share our work by co-presenting at conferences and co-delivering training with volunteers.
Part of The University of Manchester, the Whitworth gallery, its park and gardens are home to a collection of over 60,000 works of art, textiles, sculptures and wallpapers. The institution seeks connections between art, creativity, and developing a more resilient and caring society through exhibitions and civic engagement. In 2023, the Whitworth was the first gallery in the North West to receive a Gallery of Sanctuary status.
Project context
The Whitworth’s engagement and education programmes include free workshops and activities promoting outdoor health and wellbeing alongside family activities, age-friendly programmes and art and education through volunteering.
In 2019 Bukky Baldwin, an artist employed through its Whitworth Young Contemporary Programme, became the first resident of the Whitworth’s workshop, showcasing emerging creatives selling handmade ceramics, jewellery and embroidered goods produced in weekly workshops with refugees. The refugees were referred via Manchester City of Sanctuary and were enrolled for three months with all the profits to be reinvested into further training and language workshops.
In 2020 conversations between the Whitworth and local charity Afrocats started, aiming to encourage a more inclusive social environment for those seeking sanctuary. The new partnership brought accessible, cultural and creative activities to the gallery during the school holidays.
In 2023 the institution opened Traces of Displacement, an exhibition stemming from the three-year Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) project Understanding Displacement Aesthetics and Making Change in the Art Gallery with Refugees, Migrants and Host Communities led by the Centre for the Cultural History of War, at the University of Manchester. This project was developed in partnership with the University of Melbourne, Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth Art Gallery. Traces of Displacement uncovered stories of persecution, creativity, and resilience, and the experiences of displaced artists and makers, forming part of a major AHRC-funded research project: Understanding Displacement Aesthetics, led by Professor Ana Carden Coyne with Dr. Chrisoula Lionis and Dr. Angeliki Roussou (see separate case study here).
Source: The Whitworth
Goals
Afrocats x Whitworth formally launched in February 2022 to reimagine how the Whitworth connects with local families in a more accessible, inclusive and equitable way. Using creative engagement to tackle social exclusion in Greater Manchester, this partnership aims to ensure that the gallery is a space of sanctuary.
Afrocats, like the Whitworth, is driven by a mission to use art and creative experiences to drive positive social change. All gallery staff and volunteers have been given the opportunity to attend Refugee and Asylum Seeker Awareness training with Manchester City of Sanctuary, part of a city-wide programme hosted at the gallery and attended by engagement staff, the visitor team and volunteers.
The institution has provided training with Afrocats for all of the front of house visitor team alongside key members of each team across the gallery. Notably this has included providing signage in different languages, volunteers wearing badges to share the different languages they speak, providing petty cash for volunteers and participants to claim back travel receipts, increasing staff awareness around people’s cultural needs and forming an access group to progress its offer with audio guides, QR codes, ear loops, British Sign Language (BSL) and exhibition accessibility.
In addition, free training has been made available to staff and volunteers through the Manchester Metropolitan University RISE Programme using a self-study pack for working with people seeking asylum, and this is now part of all new starter training. This sits alongside Stand with Refugees Healing Spaces, trauma-informed training.
“Healing Spaces Training was highly insightful and very well delivered. It was easy to follow and to take out actionable points. As a volunteer, I’m grateful for this opportunity offered by the Whitworth.”(volunteer who has taken part in the training)
The institution continues to organise regular training and learning activities for staff, volunteers, partners and freelancers to inform them about the process of seeking sanctuary.
Participatory considerations and practices
The gallery has had sanctuary-seeker volunteers as part of its programme since engaging with Safety for Sisters in 2017. Through its New North New South exhibition it has had regular volunteers with the organisation and some who it has supported through Leave to Remain. It has worked with many sanctuary seekers who have volunteered through Afrocats, Manchester City of Sanctuary and Community Arts North West programmes, who it continues to support across its programmes and create opportunities appropriate to their interests, with references and job applications. Through the Afrocats programme it has supported young people to train and learn through the work of artists.
Project outcomes
During the Summer of 2023, the Whitworth was funded by Art Fund and NESTA to run a pilot project to explore how playful museum interventions can enhance and increase parent-child interactions to support early years development goals for families living in disadvantage. It worked with Afrocats to engage 24 families from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds as recent new arrivals to the city who have had a really positive experience, with one dad commenting “being in this environment will broaden my sons’ horizons.” Other feedback includes:
“Sometimes we don’t have time for ourselves, but it’s made a difference to me because I don’t say I’m good or bad – it’s made me realise I can create something.”
“Loved it. We rely on things like this during half term and to learn about different cultures”
“I enjoyed the atmosphere in todays class. Lovely open space and it invites childrens participation. Fun and friendly staff make it a lovely experience”
“Enjoyed how fun and active the session was. Loved that everyone was invited to get involved. Gave the children so much confidence to join in and be free.”
“Our experience today has been wonderful and that is all down to the staff here. Afrocats have been wonderful in showing us lots of different thing from dance to drumming to arts and crafts inspired by the amazing Barbara Walker and spent time telling us just how amazing this lady is and what inspired her work and how she came to make and want to change through her art! Wonderful exhibition and will definitely be returning in the future to see what else you guys have”
“Volunteering for the first time with the Manchester-based charity Afrocats at the Whitworth Art Gallery on their half-term collaboration was both a memorable and impactful experience. From the start, I felt welcomed and part of the group, and we began with an arts and crafts session where children and families took part in activities on the theme of ‘home’ inspired by Thai artist Jakkai Siributr’s current exhibition ‘There’s No Place’” “the theme of ‘home’, central to our identities, resonated with me and in my view created a shared space of understanding.”
Source: The Whitworth
The institution organised a takeover of the gallery to celebrate Refugee Week with previous events including performances from Sanctuary Sounds Choir, Music Action International, cultural dance with Afrocats, artists’ tours of its Traces of Displacement exhibition, and a film showing of Samos on Fire, about a group of musicians in a refugee camp in Samos.
The Whitworth is part of the University of Sanctuary Network who meet regularly to share opportunities for sanctuary seekers in the city. Its Volunteering and Civic Engagement Manager recently presented during one of these meetings about the various offers it has made to sanctuary seekers at the gallery and the training it has provided to staff and volunteers.
The organisation is committed to work with Manchester City of Sanctuary – offering space in kind, supporting their volunteers and events like the Big Conversations and Refugee Week events. They provide a Prayer room space, quiet rooms and spaces plus snacks, drinks and out of pocket expenses for volunteers. It continues to offer ongoing volunteer roles and opportunities to all sanctuary seekers through its regular partners Manchester City of Sanctuary, Afrocats and Community Arts North West.
Reflections
The institution has a responsibility to interrogate its collective history, and to seek the continuous structural change necessary to address inequalities based on identity including class, disability, gender, race, religion and sexual orientation. The Whitworth is an anti-racist institution committed to using its resources to address both historic and current racial inequality and violence.
Looking to the future
The Whitworth have has recently received funding from Youth Music and ACE to support a three-year project celebrating and championing creative practice with two-to-four-year-olds. It is partnering with Afrocats once again to invite families, referred by them, to nurture language development, social-emotional growth and confidence in young children who have faced barriers or experiences of displacement.
It has continued its partnership with Afrocats for over two years now and have has recently been successful in applying for Arts Council England (ACE) funding to be able to extend its family activities alongside Afrocats.
“I am delighted that Afrocats secured Arts Council England funding to continue our impactful work in collaboration with Whitworth. It will allow us to keep offering this exciting programme. But the benefits go much further. “This project fosters impressive growth for our organisations and the facilitators we train. By working in an intergenerational setting with diverse backgrounds, these facilitators gain valuable skills to propel their careers. “In times of austerity, we need families to have access to welcoming and enriching spaces. As the cost-of-living crisis continues, the people we work with have even less opportunities to get out of their homes and experience the world. I am delighted that this partnership with the Whitworth has enabled us to raise the aspirations of the people we work with and provide opportunities for them that all too often feel out of reach”” – Magdalen Bartlett, chief executive officer of Afrocats
The institution’s work will continue to support in raising awareness, providing volunteer placements, and training for staff and learning through its partnerships, to work with its collections, exhibitions, programming, and building. Collaborating with local charities and organisations such as Manchester City of Sanctuary, Afrocats, Community Arts North West, Community Arts NK and artists through our its Traces of Displacement exhibition, it aims to create a place of care, consideration and community.
It will continue to work with and alongside its partners Manchester City of Sanctuary to provide a safe environment and lasting opportunities for the sanctuary seekers in its city. Providing workshops, space, time, resources, and care as a sanctuary for those who need it most. It realises that the arts play a vital role in creating a culture of welcome and shaping the kind of society we hope to live in. It is committed as a whole gallery, from our its operation team to collections team and engagement teams, to use the power of art, and creativity and celebrate the contribution of people seeking sanctuary.
Eastwest Pictures has worked for 13 years to support asylum seekers abandoned in Europe, particularly unaccompanied minors, and those who aid them, according to Prof Sue Clayton, the project’s founder.
About the project
Eastwest Picture Fund develops innovative participatory approaches to filming and evidence-gathering with asylum seekers, to help better present their case to the public, and in law. It also aims to explore where there may still be symptomatic gaps in communication and representation, and address these
Project context
Eastwest has produced three films (Calais Children: A Case to Answer;Hamedullah: the Road Home; The Stansted 15: On Trial) a play (Mazloom) and many Channel 4 News items, about asylum seekers in their countries of origin, on their journeys here and in their new settlements. These works have all involved participatory practices in relation to the voices and concerns of such groups.
In addition, as finished works they have all involved extensive engagement and discussion, both in communities and in the courts, around how we ‘read’ such evidence and testimonies, and what we may still be missing. Hamedullah has screened at over 250 venues both nationally and internationally, and Calais Children at over 500. Often the film participants have attended and spoken at such screenings, and brought further reflection and engagement. Both films have been requested as evidence by the Immigration courts to support individual appeals, and the Calais film by the Court of Appeal in a Judicial Review (ZS and Others, 2019).
Goals
To add further elements to its existing participatory practice in two ways:
1. To self-critically examine the process of consent, especially among vulnerable people and those under the age of 18. To consider ways to renegotiate subjects’ engagement to maximise their choices and amplify their voice, while still providing protection from any adverse consequences of media exposure.
2. To explore inherent themes that occur in our transactions and our filming with asylum seekers, that might suggest there are experiences, attitudes or approaches in the subject group that we are perhaps still failing to fully see or respond to.
Source: EastWest Pictures
Participatory considerations and practices
In terms of participation, questions of safeguarding have become more pressing as material is captured and shared by audiences using online platforms, with their attendant risk of negative responses and even direct harm for those featured. For instance, in the making of Calais Children, many of the young people left in limbo in Calais wanted to express their frustrations with the UK immigration system, but the project team had to ensure that their actions and views would not prejudice their claim if the Home Office were alerted to them, and also consider if their statements about in-country danger might cause risk to family members back home if the film reached those territories. It is always a challenging balance to strike, says Clayton, while at the same striving not to ‘control’ or ‘patronise’ young people whose extreme circumstances drive them to push the boundaries of expression.
The project team has worked extensively on participatory ethics, for example supervising the Inclusion Through Art report and guidelines (Lockowandt, 2013) and designing what is described as a ‘Graded Consent Form’ (GCF) for arts and media participants, where the traditional consent form used by media companies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is replaced by a document requiring more nuanced engagement in several ways:
The GCF is not only about participant consent: it also requires the creative body seeking consent to fully detail their own position, aims and concerns; how and where they intend to show the work and to what end; and how any future remunerations will be used or shared.
Crucially the GCF lists gradations of participation: a young person may specify: “You must use a different first name that is not actually mine,” or “You may say the region I’m from, but not the actual town.” And in representational terms for instance: “We can show the back of my body but not my face.” Completing the GCF should be done as part of a wider discussion as around what different modes of participation involve, and what could be their consequences.
Clayton recommends on the form that the above discussion process takes place in a recorded format, so that the wishes and views of the subject(s) can be reviewed in the future, and terms of their participation given in full context.
Project outcomes
Versions of the GCF have been adopted as good practice by organisations like One World Media and other forums where Sue Clayton has spoken on this topic, and created a helpful tool in this field – one which she recommends is employed early in the collaborative process, and not as a kind of extractive “signing off.” Clayton has also been able to introduce some of its elements into the standard consent forms used by Channel 4 News – for instance, coming up with extra forms of protection for those who fall under the terms of the Modern Slavery Act and who may be subject to violence and threats from UK employers.
In addition, the project team has also used semiotic and thematic analysis, alongside psychoanalytic methodological approaches, to explore participants’ contributions. In a co-authored book drawing from interview material assembled since 2024, Clayton recorded participants’ negotiations with her project team (Clayton et al. 2019).
One Afghan interviewee described how one of his friends had abandoned so-called ‘legal’ routes into the UK. “They said they’d take him – but they’re just playing with them. They promise but they don’t do.” These were E’s final words as he and his friends walked off. Any representation of ‘journeys’ is bound to be full of shots of people travelling and moving. But I found increasingly I was filming people walking away from, and not towards, the camera. They had pride enough to talk and engage, but also anger, and pride, enough to walk away” (Clayton, 2019).
“E and his friends felt abandoned, angry, unheard, confused but also still doggedly resilient. To some extent they took out the anger on well-meaning volunteers and film-makers like us, while at the same time on other days wanting and demanding our care. It is important to understand all these deep dynamics, upon which the more transactional issues of ‘participation’ rest” (Clayton, 2019)
Source: EastWest Pictures
Looking to the future
A further project of Eastwest is looking at the fact that around 2 million electors can no longer exercise their democratic right to vote, as they do not have the very restricted forms of Photo ID now required. This includes many from migrant backgrounds and other marginalised groups such as those on low income, the neurodiverse, people with disabilities and trans people.
Clayton says “I and the Eastwest project team are applying our participatory practices and methodologies to work with the Electoral Commission and with over 20 grassroots advocacy groups, to fully critique the provisions of the last Act, and work with the current government on recommendations for voting at local and national level to be fully inclusive, and not render migrants and others invisible in this key democratic process.”
Clayton. S (2019) ‘Narrating the Young Migrant Journey: Themes of Self-Representation’ in Clayton, S , Gupta, A and Willis, K (ed), Unaccompanied Young Migrants: Identity , Care and Justice Bristol: Policy Press.
Lockowandt, M (2013) Inclusion Through Art: An Organisational Guideline to Using the Participatory Arts with Young Refugees and Asylum Seekers. London: Refugee Support Network.
Art Refuge is a UK registered charity (no. 1114353) that uses socially engaged art and art therapy to support the mental health and well-being of people displaced due to conflict, persecution, poverty and climate emergency, both in the UK and internationally. The work is led by a freelance team of Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC)-registered art therapists and artists, including artists with lived experiences of displacement. In addition to longitudinal programmes in northern France and southern England, the charity delivers tailor-made training for frontline workers and takes part in short-term projects, exhibitions, collaborations with local and national non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and cultural institutions, academic activity and research.
About the project
From 2021-23/24 Art Refuge offered arts-based mental health and wellbeing support to men aged 18 and over housed in Napier Barracks, East Kent, through regular psychosocial support using The Community Table, alongside further socially engaged art activity and engagement with local and national NGOs and cultural institutions. Most of the men participating came from countries across the Middle East, central Asia, and north and east Africa.
Refugee Week 2022: The Community Table on Folkestone Beach | Source: Art Refuge
Project context
On a former military site on the edge of Folkestone, Napier Barracks opened in September 2020 as a Home Office accommodation setting for adult men seeking asylum in the UK who stay for 60-90 days before being moved to dispersal accommodation across the country. It was met by far-right activity; local and national media interest; and court cases due to a large outbreak of Covid-19 and conditions deemed unsuitable, such as by Public Health England.
As in other areas of the UK asylum system, those housed at Napier have faced significant barriers to accessing relevant mental health and other support within already stretched local, statutory and community services. They also face discrimination and inequality, their lives often on hold while they wait for their claims to be processed. The inevitable impact on mental health has been further exacerbated by the Hostile Environment, inflammatory language and ongoing changes in government policy.
Goals
Art Refuge uses responsive, arts-based trauma-informed approaches, at the heart of which is The Community Table, an innovative model of open access, group-based, mental health support for people on the move and in the UK asylum system who are often isolated, marginalised and living in hostile, precarious situations. It also develops socially engaged art projects with the specific aim of building bridges into communities.
In early 2021, Art Refuge started offering weekly arts-based psychosocial support on and off the Napier site, which developed across 3 years with smaller projects woven into the longitudinal practice. Such work took time and patience, and involved a mix of artists, art therapists and practitioners from other fields. Community building and collaboration were at the heart of the project, with connections with both local and national partners, funders and cultural institutions adding huge value.
Participatory considerations and practices
The organisation uses art as a way of connecting people who are displaced and in the UK asylum system in the here-and-now to help build resilience, increase agency, and support creative thinking, while carefully protecting their anonymity. Inviting other frontline staff, local artists and visitors to participate at The Community Table and associated activity made way for dialogue, sharing of knowledge, skills and capacity that was both open and convivial. In this way, the project offered a unique opportunity to strengthen connections through intersections of differences and similarities, further increasing and strengthening links with other services.
Lived experience of displacement played a crucial role as a frontline project. Along with core artists in its team with lived experience of displacement (our team currently includes artists from Eritrea, Kurdistan, Afghanistan and Iran), diversity of age, experience, culture, gender played a central to The Community Table model and allowed for cross-fertilisation of ideas and learning. It continued connection beyond the sessions by sharing anonymised images on social media – see Instagram @artrefuge_ where our broad following includes current and former participants, developing a lively, online community.
Project outcomes
Cultural exchange and engagement included:
The Community Table in Napier Barracks and Napier Drop-In with workers from across the NGOs joining, alongside local spoken word poet Josie Carter and artist Aida Silvestri, both from Origins Untold.
“HOST – Hundreds of Small Tails” – an exhibition for Folkestone Fringe in which small plasticine animals made in Calais and Folkestone were ‘hosted’ by shops, galleries and other public venues, curated by Aida Silvestri.
Refugee Week 2022 theme of Healing: The Community Table on Folkestone Beach, funded with help from Counterpoints Arts’ Kent border fund, in partnership with Origins Untold. Table transferred to the Brewery Tap UCA Project Space (the University for the Creative Arts’ research hub), exhibition, and project space in Folkestone’s Creative Quarter) alongside exhibition including images from The Community Table and joined by several men (participants/artists) from the camp. Exhibition transferred to a room inside the camp next to Migrant Help and accessible to everyone on site.
King’s College, London University: collaboration with classicist James Webster-Corker on a project concerning ancient and modern writings on persecution, and the relationship between memory and experience. Ethics approval led to September 2022 workshops in Folkestone and Calais and final exhibition: Arcade Gallery, Bush House, the Strand, March 2023.
2023: partner on ‘Living Seams’ – “On Exile and Displacement in East Kent 2000-2021” with Atelier Armonico, Heritage Lottery funded. It included workshops and exhibitions: Woodpecker Court, Napier Barracks, Napier Drop-In; Morley College; Kent Mining Museum; JW3. Following dance workshops led by two choreographers and five dancers, the project culminated in a performance at Quarterhouse, Folkestone, of Kurt Weill’s ballet/opera Zaubernacht set in a refugee camp and at sea, attended by men from Napier, volunteers and local organisations.
Source: Art Refuge
Reflections
Community engagement and relationship building lie at the heart of the organisation’s work which supports a shared endeavour with its partners in contingency asylum accommodation and day centre spaces, thus improving resilience within the local communities where its projects take place. Direct feedback from men housed in Napier included that they felt valued, less isolated, more hopeful, and better able to cope and access other services, including mental health support. There was also interest in the Community Table model locally in Kent, but also nationally and internationally, from the NHS to art colleges, cultural institutions, local theatre projects, journalists and universities, including training requests on arts-based tools and trauma-informed practice.
Storytelling and objects: Art materials and other resources were carefully selected and adapted for this setting, responding to the culture, language, experience, skills, potential and richness of those attending e.g. through world and local maps; engineered miniature clay bricks; typewriters; photography; film; animation; postcards; drawing; plasticine; sound. Anecdotes: Emanuela Maggioli, experimental psychologist/researcher from UCL, joined us on and off-site exploring spices and Smells from Home. Using a past Folkestone Triennial catalogue, a young man built his version of the Hawksmoor-inspired beach hut by Argentinian artist Pablo Bronstein, having noticed it himself on his recent seafront walk.
Cultural exchange and working inside/outside of institutional structures: Integral to our practice is bringing cultural opportunities and institutions into the spaces where people are living and offering opportunities to bridge into the institutions themselves. With Living Seams, dance steps from the men were incorporated into the final performance, while one man from Afghanistan explained that dance performances were banned under the Taliban, and this was his first opportunity to see live dance, and the dancers/choreographers spoke about how profound they had found the workshops, and impetus to develop them further.
Looking to the future
In 2024, following reduced numbers in the Barracks, and greater community engagement and shifts in local perspectives, Art Refuge reduced its presence while the success of this project enabled our transition to the larger, complex setting of Wethersfield Asylum Centre (a former RAF site) in rural Essex where around 600 men are housed at the time of writing, and it has started to connect with local cultural institutions, such as Gainsborough House in Sudbury. Core funding for this type of much needed frontline work delivered by small NGOs and charities such as Art Refuge is an ongoing challenge, and urgently needed to support such longitudinal programmes and cross-fertilisation of projects and ideas into the GLAM sector.
Additional notes
The organisation looks forward to contributing to well-funded, safe and imaginative art-based spaces across the UK that support the mental health and well-being of people in the asylum system. It also looks forward to an end to the hostile environment, with government policy changes to include safe legal routes, and a more compassionate environment overall for asylum seekers and refugees.
Usiskin, M. Lloyd, B. Press, N. (2020) Temporary, Portable and Virtual – making galleries on the France-UK border at Calais. In Art Therapy in Museums and Galleries. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
