Braintree Drop-In, Essex 05.09.24
Art Refuge is delighted to introduce THE HOPE BRIDGE, our new community engagement project funded by Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, a fund of Tides Foundation, led by Kurdish artist Raman Feiz.
Over the coming months, the project will connect people living in Wethersfield Asylum Centre with people living locally to the camp through skills sharing & cultural exchange. It will culminate in a community event & meal, a small collaborative publication and, we hope, some perspective shifts.
Returning to the Braintree drop-in yesterday after a short break, we began gentle conversations with local volunteers about our new project. In amongst the jigsaw puzzles, postcards and drawing we heard about friendships and connections that have already formed with the men housed at the former RAF base at Wethersfield and local residents.
One volunteer told us about the time she had spent translating an animated poem written in Persian by one of the residents, himself an accomplished professional artist. She had screenshot each frame of the illustrated poem on her phone from his video and translated each line in turn: ‘I wanted to understand his words’ she said. This painstaking activity was hugely touching to the artist and has led to subsequent conversations and a deepening of their exchange.
At The Community Table, new connections were formed, while familiar people returned, all of us pleased to connect and reconnect. A clunky old wooden jigsaw puzzle offered a non-verbal way for one man from Afghanistan to rejoin the table in an interrelational way - person to person, piece by piece, each shape slotting into place, a tiny triumph and problem solved, the fragmented image slowly taking shape.
A young man from Ethiopia who didn’t speak English and had not been able to settle on any activity at the table, eventually became absorbed in drawing the Ethiopian flag, which we then found a space for on the wall of the church hall.
Updates to follow across coming weeks!
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