Posts

Showing posts from November, 2019

The Colour of Home

In  this post  we wrote about colour and emotion and poetry. We have continued to use colour as a tool to spark ideas and evoke memories. Over the last few weeks we have reflected on which colours represent our experiences of the places we call home, both here in Birmingham, and the diverse countries we come from. There have been stories of great love and joy; and of deep pain and suffering. There have, always, been glimmers of hope. The following poem is a collective creative effort, based on the memories we chose to share of the homes we left behind. The Colour of Home Sometimes we didn’t know the value of things until they are lost: In my family home, my breath was deep and soft. Coffee under a neem tree shadow, a warm family feeling surrounds me. There, where brown is common, we grow up with roots as steady as our pyramids. Wind blows from the past, urging us to keep on the right path. Love, bonded by blood, traditionally. A rich culture, trapped inside

Encounters (1)

The Stories of Hope and Home project is made up of two distinct but interrelated aspects. One is about building a supportive community of people who have current or recent lived experience of the asylum process. That process is already well underway. Good conversations are happening. Lots of cups of tea have been shared. The other aspect is to enable those people to share their stories, their humanity, with others. In theory the intention was to start this later but in reality many of those now participating in the project were involved in last year's pilot. As such they have already started developed some of the skills and more importantly the confidence and the desire to share something of their lives with others. We have already felt able to begin saying yes to opportunities to start sharing our stories. Whilst the project is flexible, and open to responding to different invitations or suggestions, we hope to primarily engage with those in educational settings: young peopl