Our Nation of Refuge team joined Reading Community Festival, celebrating 100 years of the University and its special relationship with the local community. Reading’s rich refugee history made this festival the ideal place to begin the public engagement side of the project, inviting festival visitors to share their thoughts about Britain’s relationship with refugees.
Our work aims to encourage people to critically consider how refugees arriving in Britain since 1930 have been welcomed and received. We tried to do this through our festival stand, showing different refugee movements that have come to Britain, some well-known and some lesser so.
We invited visitors to sit in our living room installation (a quiet and reflective space within the energy of the festival) and write down their thoughts about Britain’s refugee history and what future policy could look like.
Objects on loan from Reading Museum also prompted conversation and questions about Reading’s connections to Britain’s global and Imperial history.
A big thank you to everyone who shared their perspectives and ideas with us, or who simply reflected on the experiences of refugees in Britain over the past century.
A true community partnership
We were joined by Brendan Carr, Curator at Reading Museum, which is a core partner on our project. We’re working together to create a public exhibition that provides access to refugee historical objects and invites public engagement with our research findings.
We’re also collaborating with Rank & File Theatre, a community group who work with refugees, survivors of abuse and people with disabilities. Jude Haste, Director of Rank & File theatre, joined us at the festival to share how she works with Reading’s community to better understand the perspectives of local people, including refugees, inviting them to share their stories through collaborative theatre.
It was great to see colleagues from the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) at the festival who continue to support our Nation of Refuge project, sharing their expertise. We’re delighted to be working with them to engage with the local community through a display in their museum alongside wider public engagement activity.
Click here for a full round up of Reading’s Centenary Community Festival.