The idea
Iranian artist and refugee, Majid Adin, will paint a giant, colourful Choose Love mural on Hanbury street to create a powerful, unifying message for Refugee Week in the heart of Tower Hamlets.
Help Refugees is a grassroots humanitarian movement. We fund over 80 projects across Europe and the Middle East. Our message to the world is Choose Love. This will be the central theme of the piece.
Majid is one of Help Refugees' ambassadors. An incredibly talented artist, he won a competition to create the official music video for Elton John's Rocketman.
We believe in celebrating our shared humanity in creative, positive ways to foster acceptance, integration and community. With this project we will do just this, working with children from local schools as well as local refugees and asylum seekers.
What we'll deliver
- Create an eye-catching mural celebrating Refugee Week
- All backers are invited to an evening of celebration at the Choose Love summer party 21st June at Second Home
Why it's a great idea
This mural is a powerful and positive message that is unpolitical but bold. We all have a choice. To be motivated by fear and animosity, to build walls and turn our backs on the world. Or to nurture the hopeful; to recognise our common future. To choose love. The world can feel broken, but everywhere these cracks are letting in light. Help Refugees #ChooseLove campaign has captured global attention online.
Help Refugees and Second Home will also be reaching out to the local Tower Hamlets community to come help Majid by helping create the mural. This includes refugees, school children and local migrants.
We need your support to bring this mural to life. Pledge what you can and help spread the Choose Love message to the many residents, workers and tourists passing Hanbury St every day!
Steps to get it done
- Painting will Begin 11th June
- Mural Complete 18th June
- Choose Love Summer Party and Mural Launch 21st June
Our previous Choose Love campaigns include the Choose Love shop, where shoppers bought real products for refugees - nappies, fresh fruit and veg, blankets and more - which we then purchased in the ten countries where we work. We raised over £1 million in a month. Next we launched a restaurant with Syrian chef Imad Alarnab where £15 from every ticket goes towards the running costs of the only paediatric hospital in the Aleppo region. These campaigns have had a media reach of hundreds of millions. We already have interest from viral video channels about this project. We met Majid when he was living in the camp in Calais.
This project forms part of Second Home's Refugee Week activity. We moved into Second Home a year ago and they have shared our campaigns, hosted fundraisers and provided volunteers. They currently run Libreria Language Labs in collaboration with ELATT, drop-in sessions to help the migrant community of Tower Hamlets improve their English reading and writing skills.
