Over the last couple of months I’ve been busy working through hundreds of applications and interviewing a string of amazingly talented people. For what I hear you ask? For our incredible new creative team that will be leading an exciting new heritage learning project ‘Lest We Forget’, which kicks off this month with our first of a series of creative workshops. And that is where you come in!
But first let me give you a bit of background on the ‘Lest We Forget’ project.
‘Lest We Forget’ is a new arts and heritage learning project co-ordinated by Scottish Refugee Council and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The purpose of the project is to discover more about the experiences of Belgian refugees and their host communities in Scotland during the First World War. And as well as uncovering the past, we will look at participants’ experiences and understanding of integration today.
And that’s where we need you. If you are a refugee, asylum seeker or a local Scot from a community which has hosted refugees in recent times – we would love you to get involved as a ‘Heritage Researcher’.
Our first workshop – aptly named ‘The Gathering’ – will take place on Thursday 22 October 10.30am – 3.30pm at Scottish Refugee Council’s offices in Glasgow City Centre. It will be a chance for you to find out more about the ‘Lest We Forget’ project, meet the team co-ordinating it, and to tell us more about you and why you’re keen to be involved.
There are very limited places and you need to register – details on how to register below. We’ve allocated a number of these places to refugees and asylum seekers, who we particularly welcome to be part of the project.
We’ll be running one workshop a week from October to December, with two further workshop phases from February – March and April – June 2016, and we’re keen for people to be involved as much as possible in these. Once you register, we’ll give you a full copy of the workshop dates.
The project will culminate in an exhibition of your work – the oral histories, archive material, objects, film and photographs you’ve helped to gather. We’ll also have a documentary film-making team covering the project throughout. Both the exhibition and the final film will be presented at a central Glasgow venue during Refugee Festival Scotland in June 2016. Exciting stuff!
How to get involved
If you’d like to be involved in ‘Lest We Forget’, now is the time to register. And here’s how to do it: contact Mirella Arcidiacono, ‘Lest We Forget’ Project Coordinator, at heritage@Scottishrefugeecouncil.org.uk or call 0141 248 9799. You will be sent a registration form to complete and return and further details of our first workshop ‘The Gathering’, as well as the entire workshop dates up until December 2015
Watch this short video to find out how we have brought to life some of our past projects from some of those involved.
