Public participation and community engagement are critical to our project, enabled by valued external collaborations
‘Community engagement is a critical part of the Nation of Refuge project and we’re lucky to be collaborating with a number of community organisations, local and national. Reading-based groups including Rank & File Theatre, NISSEN, Reading Museum, the Museum of English Rural Life can make sure our work speaks to local communities and engages with local history. The Mass Observation Archive stretches back to the late 1930s and can offer a huge amount of insight into how ordinary people in Britain have related to people seeking refuge from overseas during the past 100 years.
Dr Ellen Pilsworth, Associate Professor and Project Leader
Working with Museums Partnership Reading
We’re working closely with Museums Partnership Reading (which includes Reading Museum and the Museum of English Rural Life) to create a large public exhibition exploring Britain’s relationship with refugees and how it’s changed during the past 100 years.
We will illustrate how legal frameworks for people seeking refuge have developed since the 1930s in line with changing global contexts. The exhibition will also explore how people in Britain have thought about and responded to people from other countries seeking refuge here across time, and how refugees have described their own experiences. Historical documents, government correspondence, and the personal objects and testimonies of individuals, past and present, will bring these histories to life in their full complexity.
Working with Mass Observation Project
We’ve commissioned a Mass Observation Project directive, inviting their community of observers to share their views and experiences about various aspects of Britain’s relationship with refugees. The Mass Observation Project began in the 1930s (where our project focus starts) so we’re able to look back at observer responses to questions on similar themes at other points in time.
Working with Rank & File theatre
We’re collaborating with Rank & File Theatre, a community group who work with refugees, survivors of abuse and people with disabilities. Their theatre practice is rooted in collaboration and co-working with communities from the get-go. We will be working with members of their community to better understand the perspectives of local people, including refugees.
We’re delighted to also be collaborating with:
A local focus on Reading, as a diverse town with a rich refugee history, in complement to our national research focus
Ellen explains, ‘In some ways Reading is an ‘every town’, but in other ways it’s special as it’s harmoniously diverse. We want our Nation of Refuge project to be informed by, and of benefit to, our local community. We have a strong relationship with Museums Partnership Reading which has excellent links into diverse Reading communities.
We’re also collaborating with Rank and File theatre group who have a track record of listening to different groups of people in Reading and creating theatre with them, not for them.
Many of our University of Reading colleagues are engaged in related research across theatre, the arts, literature and history, kindly offering their expertise and insight to our project.’
One in 3 people living in Reading were born outside of the UK. On the whole, migrant families in Reading have dispersed around the town, (article link), which has resulted in a more integrated civic community.
Since 2015, Reading has been a City of Sanctuary, working to further embed a culture of welcome for people seeking sanctuary. Reading University is recognised as a University of Sanctuary, welcoming sanctuary seekers through its research, teaching and community involvement.