UK
Socially engaged art, art therapy and training
Art Refuge has had a presence in the UK since the charity was founded in 2006.
Since 2020, we have expanded our arts-based psychosocial workshops beyond Bristol, into London, Kent and rural Essex. Here we have been offering mental health & wellbeing support using The Community Table model to people (mostly young men) housed in Home Office-run hotels and large camps, alongside short-term projects, exhibitions and collaborations.
From Calais to the UK
Two films about crossing the English Channel
In 2022, Art Refuge collaborated with young people through Young Roots on making a series of stop-frame animations. This work was led by Tony Gammidge and Majid Adin. You can see a collection of videos below.
The Community Table
Folkestone, Kent
2020-23
From Autumn 2020, Art Refuge worked in local community spaces in Folkestone, Kent, supporting men recently arrived in the UK and temporarily housed at Napier Barracks, a former military camp now run by the Home Office. Artist Aida Silvestri, whose origins are in Eritrea, became a core member of the team, also leading on our photography workshops for young people in collaboration with Kent Refugee Action Network (KRAN). We were also joined by local spoken word poet Josie Carter.
Our weekly Folkestone project used The Community Table. Here, we actively invited volunteers, local staff, interpreters and visitors to sit around a table and share spaces through art making.
HOST Hundreds of Small Tails
UK & France
2015/2022
Photography credit to Phoebe, Foster Carer and ROUTES/HERE group member.
Hundreds Of Small Tails is a collection of small plasticine creatures made during Art Refuge sessions in and around Calais, Kent and Kings Cross from 2015 onwards. Without direction or instruction, these palm sized creatures were made by displaced people in moments of absorption and connection with others despite precarious and sometimes dangerous living conditions as they saught lives free from war, oppression and other forms of political violence. Once created, the creatures were left in the hands of the team, and made their way back and forth across the English Channel to regular art and art therapy spaces, where their small yet collective presence inspired others to make more creatures in a visual call and response.
HOST was first curated by artist Aida Silvestri, and exhibited at the Folkestone Fringe in 2021, where the creatures were taken in by shopkeepers across the town, displayed in windows for the town’s inhabitants to notice, take interest in and begin dialogues on displacement, hope and resilience. In the months throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Art Refuge formed an online support group called ROUTES/HERE for foster carers, key-workers and supported lodgings hosts who were living and working in Bristol and the surrounding counties with young people who had been displaced. This group invited HOST to the South West. Through simple acts of hospitality the creatures were welcomed into the homes and workplaces of the ROUTES/HERE group, and their networks. Starting at the launch of the Bristol Refugee Festival the project spanned into Refugee Week where we observe the theme of healing through the connection, symbols of belonging and hope that these creatures can bring.. HOST was visually documented and mapped on its dedicated Instagram page @artrefuge_host where the public could watch the network grow through collective acts of hospitality.
An online support group for those who support and care for young, displaced individuals.
ROUTES/HERE; an online support group for foster carers, supported lodgings hosts, advocates and key workers. Their work that supports, cares, guides and learns from young people who have reached safety in the UK from Eritrea, Sudan, Afghanstan, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, Syria and Kurdistan.
Inspired by conversations with the network around our art and art therapy groups with young refugees and asylum seekers in Bristol (2017-2021).
The group in its original format came to a close at the end of 2021, as the group wanted to change the direction and investment of their energies to a political-art project in response to feelings of hopelessness surrounding the fall of Kabul and the introduction of the Nationality and Borders Bill
to Parliament.
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Led by Bristol lead, Sarah Robinson and local Intercultural Trainer and foster carer,
Alison Clarkson Webb.
Invited by North Somerset Council and Curo Group, this open-access photography group is for young people in North Somerset who have experiences of seeking asylum in the UK. The weekly photography groups include a range of photographic processes alongside the use of other art materials and media, and focus on physical, geographical and psychological orientation, including walks using photography, found objects and mapping. As the core component for the group, photography offers opportunities for expressive freedom, playfulness and a sense of agency over the telling of individual and collective stories.