Every June Refugee Week stands to remind everyone that migrants, asylum seekers and refugees should be celebrated and welcomed with empathy and understanding into UK society. The Refugee Week campaign is a positive example of how spreading love and championing difference can make change. This year the theme was ‘Our Home’, encouraging participants from across the world to share what ‘Home’ means to them.

Kazzum Arts has a long history of working with refugees and migrants within our Pathways programme. It has been documented that engaging in creative activities can ‘counter loneliness and allow refugees/asylum seekers to develop a sense of belonging in a safe space.’ (source) and we have used this knowledge to build a programme which gives refugees and asylum seekers access to creative opportunities in as regular and sustained ways as possible. The theme of ‘Our Home’ is one that has been present in previous work that we have delivered during our Pathways project, which demonstrates its prevalence as a thread that runs through the refugee community.

Our Brighter Futures project, which meets once a week on Wednesdays, is an example of this. We have been working with the young people at Brighter Futures for many years, building a community around activism, artmaking and conversation. One of their most recent campaigns directly aligns with the Refugee Week 2024 theme of ‘Our Home’. Their campaign ‘Our Homes, Our Rights’ uses poetry to examine how the UK government is failing to provide adequate and safe housing for asylum seekers.

The theme of ‘Our Home’ is also present in our animation ‘Help them Feel at Home’ about a young girl named Sana, her toy dinosaur, and their journey to find safety in the UK. The animations, and accompanying resources, were created to encourage children to empathise with the difficulties that refugees face.

This year we celebrated Refugee Week through our Creative Wellbeing workshops, a series of arts workshops delivered in partnership with leading youth refugee groups around London. We brought young people together to create artworks on the themes of home, connection and positivity to build better wellbeing together. We stand with refugees and asylum seekers, and we hope that the UK can be a new home to anyone who needs it.

Refugee Week 2024 : Our Home