This year for Refugee Week Scotland we celebrated and shared welcome – in all its wonderful forms!
Blog by Suzi Simpson, Arts and Cultural Development Officer at Scottish Refugee Council, Co-ordinator of Refugee Week Scotland
Welcome, Fàilte, Velkommen, Tere tulemast, Benvenute, Soo dhowow, Karibu, khush āmdīd, Ngiyanemukela, khosh amadid….!!
This year we celebrated and shared welcome – in all its wonderful forms. We sang, we danced, we laughed, we raised our voices and together we celebrated what welcome looks like in our communities in all their vibrant diversity!
Showing an unforgettable welcome
With the Commonwealth Games bringing visitors from 70 nations to Scotland and negativity towards migrants in the UK becoming increasingly prevalent, our message that people fleeing from conflict and persecution and seeking sanctuary in Scotland are welcome here became more urgent to convey than ever.
The theme of welcome permeated all the festival celebrations and was central to our advocacy and media work. Notably a full chamber Scottish Government led parliamentary debate was held on Tuesday 17 June on a fair and just asylum system in Scotland. This achieved a cross party consensus that Refugee Week Scotland and holistic integration practices a vital to our society.
We generated 60 items of media coverage across print, web, TV and radio. This was complemented by a strong social media campaign, with over 100 people posing with our #IWelcomeRefugees sign and posting this to their personal social media forums.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95NI7zkSyT0&feature=youtu.be
Programme of Welcome – Highlights
Over 130 events took place across Scotland as part of the festival from 3 – 29 June. With the plethora of events on offer, pin pointing any one particular highlight is incredibly difficult. I will take this opportunity to outline only a few of mine.
Refugee Week Scotland kicked off with our launch event at the Old Fruitmarket, featuring incredible performances from Blochestra, a 20 musician strong ensemble, Big Big Sing, with 50 participants from all over Glasgow and Ayawara Ensemble of 5 drummers and 2 West African Dancers dancers.
The launch also offered a ‘first look’ at our 90second film ‘Welcome’.
We were off to a great start but the fun didn’t end there.
36 community groups joined the celebration, sharing the culture of ‘New Scots’ from the Ivory Coast, Syria, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Cameroon, South Africa, Nigeria and lots of places in between. At every event I was greeted with world food (much of which I had never tried before), good conversation (even picking up greetings in new languages) and always the warmest of welcomes! The array of activities taking place and talent was amazing. These events truly bring the world to our door.
The A View from Here project, documenting the heritage of Glasgow’s high rise flats, due for demolition in the coming months, through the eyes of refugees, migrants and local Scots culminated in an exhibition and documentary film hosted by Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and Stereo and the Old Hairdressers.
Elsewhere Scottish Youth Theatre hosted Ignite Youth Theatre’s The Island and Scottish Guardianship Service Our Glasgow exhibition. The festival went underground at the Arches with Sarah Roberts’ What Home Means exhibition, Drew Taylor’s Love Club and 44 Stories, engaging with the shocking fact that in 44 of the 70 commonwealth nations homosexually is illegal.
6 primary schools from across Glasgow participated in our Welcome banner making competition with participating schools coming together for a special screening of E.T. to receive prizes. The winning school, Blackfriars primary’s welcome banner featured below.
We brought a little bit of Scots Gaelic culture into the mix by screening Seachd, one of the first Gaelic feature films at Glasgow Film Theatre. To close the festival we held a Céilidh Còmhla in partnership with Glasgow Gaelic Arts at Barras Art and Design, with musicians from DRC, Kurdistan and Lebanon collaborating with Scots Gaelic artists.
GRAMnet hosted an insightful and engaging programme of discussions and workshops. Scottish Refugee Council’s ‘Refugees and the Referendum’ explored Scotland’s constitutional future and engaged refugees with the debate.
A big part of the festival is about coming together to have fun and we were not short of a party – Philanthrobeats, LGBT Unity’s Gaylidh, Garnethill Multicultural Centre Women’s Choir and Voicebeat’s events and our third festival concert ‘World Refugee Day Concert’ with Scottish Album of the year Award winners Young fathers, Skippinish and Balkanarama’s Tantz, DJ Zarije and Miss Zenina – we danced ‘til we dropped! And picked up 4 **** stars in the Scotsman!
So what was your highlight of Refugee Week Scotland 2014? We want to hear from you! We hope you enjoyed the week, watch this space for more Arts and Cultural events and activities and details of our plans for next year’s festival…
