Re-Build Refuge Europe, a new project to counteract the discourses of crisis

European Alternatives leads Re-Build Refuge Europe, a project that brings together partners from the UK, Sweden, Spain, Finland and Germany, and Greece. It aims to counteract the dominant discourses of ‘crisis’ and ‘threat’ by using art, culture and innovative practices allowing European citizens and refugees to learn from each other as equals. Activities of the project include storytelling, training and workshops for participants and the digital arts. The results of these collective practices, will be shaped into an exhibition format and presented to the public as part of the Athens Biennale 2017 and published as a book. In the next stage, they will travel to the TRANSEUROPA Festival 2017 in Madrid.

The recent influx of refugees in Europe,  mostly from the Middle East and Northern African countries, is widely interpreted in media and political discourse as a crisis and a threat. In several national elections the extreme right and openly xenophobic parties have gained substantive support. Re-build Refuge Europe’s objective is to counteract this discourse and beliefs. It builds on creative cultural proposals and offers spaces for processes of co-creation to be developed, in which refugees and migrants are considered as a constitutive part of the remaking of European communities.

Actions to support the recent newcomers are mushrooming all over Europe, often focusing by necessity on aid, social and economic support. We believe that it is the cultural role and duty of Europe to welcome refugees properly and to allow for cultural hybridisation to happen. We believe that only by fully realising the potential of cultural hybridisation and by being a welcoming and supportive area will Europe build a secure society for its future, inside and outside its borders.

The project Re-build Refuge Europe provides the space to link up cultural actors and societal actors mobilised in different corners of Europe to exchange and build new practices. This project produces innovative practices that allow European citizens and refugees to work together on equal footing and learn from each other. It also uses a creative mix of mediums to raise European citizens’ knowledge of issues at stake for refugees and in making Europe a place of Refuge where all people can feel safe.

The Creative Europe programme funds activities that recognise and celebrate the contribution refugees and migrants make to cultural diversity in Europe. Culture can be a means for refugees and migrants to meet, communicate with and become part of existing communities.

All the information about the project activities, deadlines and details on how to participate, will be soon published.