1 Pledge worth £103 years ago
Supporting community-led projects to help your local area recover from the COVID-19 crisis
Impact data and claims within this report are provided by the project creator and have not been independently verified by Spacehive.
Art, music, food, workshops and conversation in collaboration with refugee artists in Lewisham. Run alongside Refugee Week 2021, our events will bring the community together and support wellbeing.
We are looking to fund a week of art exhibitions, music performances, cooking demos, storytelling, workshops and community conversation centred on Lewisham as a borough of sanctuary. In difficult times finding shared space for celebration and joy is all the more important. We will work collaboratively with individual refugee artists and local arts and refugee organisations, including Refugee Café, Goldsmiths STAR and Lewisham Refugee Welcome. This project will showcase work and create paid opportunities for refugee creators and engage the local Lewisham community. Merging art and collective action we will explore what it means to be a borough of sanctuary – centering refugee voices and developing a community of care that allows for connections between different groups. We will use creativity to challenge negative narratives regarding migration and celebrate the skills, expertise and experience refugees bring and the way cultural exchange develops and enriches community life in Lewisham
What we'll deliver:
Why it's a great idea:
Refugee creatives will benefit from improved access to local creative communities, financial support enabling creative activities and opportunities to reach new audiences with their work. We are building on a strong network of refugee organisations in Lewisham and the commitment of the local council in becoming a Borough of Sanctuary and welcoming an increasing number of refugees. This project will celebrate and highlight these strengths. Partner organisations will benefit from opportunities to collaborate and promote their organisation and services to the wider local community, and we envisage new opportunities for building relationships and partnership working across the borough. The wider local Lewisham community benefits from unique local creative events that support connections and reduce isolation. Recording/videoing events and sharing these online will increase accessibility, welcome new people to our work and develop networks for future collaborations.
Steps to get it done:
We would be holding events across Lewisham from Goldsmiths University to Catford Mews and Beckenham Mansion. To increase accessibility and reach we will record/video events and partner with local social media platforms to share this content. Support for portable/sharable home recording equipment will allow artists in our network to continue developing this online content. Events/activities would include: Traditional Ethiopian music (Masinko) Shoulder dance classes Storytelling Folksong sharing Cooking classes with Refugee Cafe Seminars/workshops on refugee issues and exploring support that exists locally Exhibition of paintings by refugee artists Photography exhibition in collaboration with Lewisham Refugee Welcome
Journey
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Supporting community-led projects to help your local area recover from the COVID-19 crisis
How will the money be spent?Total £4,965
Costs Breakdown
This shows how money raised for the project will be spent. These costs have been confirmed by the project's Delivery Manager and verified.
Overfunding
This project is enabled for overfunding. If the project hits its funding goal before the end of the campaign period, any extra funds raised will be spent (in order of priority) on:
Total £4,965
Our Volunteer List
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VolunteerCreate Without Borders aims to promote and celebrate the work of creatives with lived experience of forced migration. We do this by collaboratively creating digital and physical spaces that showcase work, facilitate partnership working, create paid opportunities and engage the local Lewisham community. We use the term creative in the broadest sense to include visual artists, musicians, filmmakers, comedians, chefs and more. Specifically we:
Participation in the arts is no different to employment - opportunities often arise from your connections rather than experience or abilities; connections that refugees, building a new life in a new country, are less likely to have. Create Without Borders grew out of learning through the first lockdown when members of our group organised online fundraisers for local and grassroot groups, bringing together musicians, artists and others. We heard from many refugee creatives who were looking for spaces to share their work and find people they could collaborate with. Our local community and online events have provided a space for refugee creatives to build networks and form new collaborations, as well as creating paid opportunities.
As we build a growing, diverse audience, we have created spaces to foster relationships across different groups. For example, running a community arts exhibition showcasing paintings by refugee artists, performance by a refugee musician and catered by Refugee Cafe. This both showcased work and provided networking opportunities, which we anticipate will lead to artists being better supported, further paid work and the sharing of resources and knowledge. In an age of increasingly hostile rhetoric around refugees and migrants, it’s also critical to be countering this narrative. An effective way to do this is through platforms and spaces that recognise the skills, expertise and experiences of refugees and the way cultural exchange enriches community life. We have been able to work with lots of local groups in Lewisham and this project will strengthen these partnerships and offer perspectives on new ways of working in these challenging times.
Project Owner: Create Without Borders The Project Owner takes legal responsibility for receiving and spending the funds raised and ensuring the project is delivered.
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