POST 24: 'Refugee Tales'

"If ministers are to “start work on plans to identify innovative efficiencies and reforms, delivering the remaining consolidation over the next four years” (Report, 21 July), can we suggest that the Home Office saves substantial costs by ending the inhumane and unjust practice of indefinite detention for immigration purposes? People are locked up, without trial, for an indefinite period, for no more than an administrative convenience. This practice costs the taxpayer £166m a year, £75m of which is spent on locking people up who are then just released into the community."

Suzanne Fletcher

Chair, Liberal Democrats for Seekers of Sanctuary 

The Guardian, Letters

Sunday 26 July 2015 20.07 BST

WALKING

http://refugeetales.org/events/

The Refugee Tales was dreamed up by a consortium of academics and writers, and whilst never  never quite leaving aside that slightly bookish feel, is nonetheless an  example of concerned citizens putting their shoes on and walking for what they believe.

The event followed the actual path of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a nine-day pilgrimage to show  solidarity with Refugees and Detainees. There were stopovers each night along the trail, with readings from authors such as Iain Sinclair and Ali Smith, and concerts playing to appreciative crowds, some of whom marched the whole way from Dover to Crawley,  others who caught trains to single venues.  It is annexed to the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group (GWDG).

TALKING

In Australia, ‘Welcome Dinners’ are a different forum for ordinary citizens to take action in ways that match their need to show they care.

https://www.facebook.com/TheWelcomeDinnerProject?fref=ts

PUBLISHING

"One of the refugees tried to explain to me what life was like in the transit centre after long periods in detention: 'You become domesticated, like an animal inside a cage. You think they are fine. They look normal, they seem healthy but they could not survive in nature, and that is like us now. We become like that. Mentally, we are not fine.'

An ethnic Rohingya refugee told me, 'In Burma, the government shoots us. Here, they kill us mentally.' "

Elaine Pearson, The Guardian, Monday 20 July 2015 06.50 BST

Elaine Pearson is the Australia director at Human Rights Watch. Follow her on Twitter @pearsonelaine

c. Z Soboslay 2015.

POST 21: La Nausee: refugee arts; youth theatre

Whilst Alice Underground  unsettle one's compass and Love Bombs and Apples' explorations invert cultural  presumptions, Let Us In by A-Level drama students at Corelli College turn intercultural expectations inside-out in a different way. 

London's Migration Museum Project--which, tellingly, after 3 years still does not have a 'home'--produced this event at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, comprised of 3 performances made by 3 different groups of students, who each sagely fielded questions from the audience following their respective showings.  In the performance I saw, five young women (Ruth, Ayo, Khadija, Isatou and Elvine)  of African, Caribbean or sub-continental origin, presented a tale spun out of refugee stories, placed before, during or after migration.

c. Migration Museum Project

The performance piece delivered poignant tales with wry humour and a sophisticated understanding of crafting for the stage. Fuelled by an impassioned drive to tell their own and their ancestors’ stories, they perform with sass, skill and aplomb, representing refugees on a long boat journey;  the Caribbean mother with very little English seeking work as a nanny; themselves as schoolchildren frustrated by the limited 'African history' classes repeated year after year. They also slip back in time and portray black slaves and white southern belles, white teachers amongst black girls condescending to the class. Their performances alternately represent and subvert the position of immigrants trying to 'fit in'. Each has a singing voice and stage presence to die for. They are aware they live in a country safe to tell these tales, and sacrifices people made to afford them the dream of a career on stage.


Meanwhile, Counterpointsarts and Platforma—refugee and intercultural arts network hubs— produced dis/placed, a week-long exhibition and 'Learning Labs' event, in the basement of  the old Shoreditch Town Hall. The basement's peeling walls are an appropriate setting for films, photographs and performances taken or centred in refugee camps, or on the lives of refugees settled away from their homelands.

http://counterpointsarts.org.uk/event/displaced/

Platforma runs a biannual conference, the next being in November 2015.

http://www.platforma.org.uk/pf_events/platforma-conference/

This year it comprises two events; the first is a free event which aims to 'explore new collaborations and networking between English and international artists' [Nov 4]; followed by a Conference from Nov 5-6 with an aim to 'bring together artists in all disciplines, organisations and academe with an interest in the arts by, about and with refugees.'

See more at: http://www.platforma.org.uk/pf_events/platforma-conference/#sthash.pJpPJiuF.dpuf


c. Z Soboslay 2015.