Telling stories, re-imagining lives: An inter-disciplinary examination of arts-based methods & life-stories as a vehicle for self-expression among refugees & asylum seekers.

As news stories around the ‘refugee crisis’ permeated the British social imagination in a Brexit vote era, new questions around notions of belonging, borders, and (im)migration emerged. Refugees and asylum seekers, now more than ever, are represented in accordance to dominant narratives and in a variety of visual forms through news media, advocacy campaigns, films, and popular culture, amongst other means. Despite their hyper-visibility, stories of those seeking asylum are more often told about them by others rather than by those seeking asylum themselves. Asylum-seeking stories emerge within a matrix of power relations responding to different narrative landscapes, expectations, and audiences. Within the current ‘hostile environment’ in the United Kingdom (UK) and across Europe, the need to tell stories in a ‘safe’ space becomes imperative. Through combining biographical work with arts-based methodologies, the project adopts an ethno-mimetic methodological framework that facilitated the production, exchange, and creative re-interpretation of stories of living in exile. An 18-month fieldwork period, involving life story interviews, creative sessions and photo-elicitation discussions, yields the data on which this study is based. Drawing on symbolic interactionism and social constructionism theories, this research examines how individuals seeking asylum (re)present themselves through their stories and explores how such experiences are negotiated by participants in an attempt to respond to the expectations of the ‘good refugee’. Through an exploration of interviewees’ journeys (physical, legal and resettlement), this study reveals the enduring impact of immigration policies on individuals seeking asylum in the UK. More importantly, it identifies a particular sociopolitical moment that is defined by increased hostility, punitive policies, and disbelief, as well as legal, cultural, and narrative expectations over asylum seekers’ ‘deservingness’. This thesis argues that an arts-based approach to research can transform individuals’ lives by allowing them to participate meaningfully in the production of knowledge; by feeding their creativity and existing storytelling skills into the research process; and by initiating a safe space for participants to tell personal stories that may remain unheard as a result of the narrative expectations of the deserving/undeserving; weak/strong; grateful/ungrateful ‘refugee’ (Sales 2002; Taylor 2016; Stavropoulou 2019: 94)

The Adventures of the Little Prince in the World: Repilot Action Activity Handbook

The adventures of the Little Prince in the World is an evidence-based learning resource drawing on an intervention (known as a pilot action) to support teachers, educational professionals, but also parents and students, to use narratives of migration through storytelling. The handbook follows a step-by-step overview of all co-created activities which you can use to replicate, adapt, and evaluate with your students. Adopting the literary work by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “The Little Prince”, the handbook offers a collection of co-created activities designed to embrace the needs, voices, and experiences of children in education and encourage them to reflect and re-imagine migratory experiences through storytelling and creative methods. You might find this handbook helpful if you: - Work in a school/college - Work in the charity/NGO sector - Engage in participatory research with children, young people and/or educators This guidance was developed as part of the NEW ABC project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon2020 research and innovation programme. It draws together 13 partners from nine European countries with the aim of developing and implementing nine pilot actions. All NEW ABC pilot actions (activity- based interventions) include children and young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds, but also teachers, families, communities and other stakeholders in education, as co-creators of innovation to empower them and make their voice heard

Empowering Young Translators: Pilot Action Activity Handbook

Empowering Young Translators (EYT) is an evidenced-based learning resource drawing on an intervention (known as a pilot action) to support young people who translate and interpret for peers, family, and the local community. EYT focuses on exploring the social, cultural, emotional and wellbeing aspects of being a young translator and/or multilingual. Young translating can be both a challenging and rewarding activity and so these guidance materials are designed to enable you to open a space for considering the emotional engagement and wellbeing of the language broker through a series of activities. Throughout this handbook, the activities are framed to explore language brokering as a caring activity that young people do for others and raise awareness of the practice of young translating across schools, community groups or youth groups. You will find this guidance useful if you encounter young translators and: - Work in a school/college - Work in the charity/NGO sector - Engage in research with young people This guidance was developed as part of the NEW ABC project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon2020 research and innovation programme. It draws together 13 partners from nine European countries with the aim of developing and implementing nine pilot actions. All NEW ABC pilot actions (activity- based interventions) include children and young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds, but also teachers, families, communities and other stakeholders in education, as co-creators of innovation to empower them and make their voice heard

Sharing ‘hostile’ stories: Exploring the UK's ‘hostile environment’ through participatory arts-based methods

This article presents personal stories from a participatory biographical arts-based study with a specific category of racialised migrants: individuals seeking asylum in the North East of England. Responding to the important questions posed by this special issue, the article explores individual experiences of navigating the UK's hostile environment with a focus on the threefold punitive ‘threat’ of dispersal, detention, and destitution ( Bloch and Schuster, 2005). Adopting an intersectional lens, the discussion highlights the impact of such policies and their compound effect of creating (un)safe and exclusionary everyday spaces, while also outlining the potential for resistance as illustrated by participants’ actions and their creative (re)actions as part of the study's arts-based approach

Brushed under the carpet: Examining the complexities of participatory research

Participatory research is sometimes difficult and risky, but there is a paucity of opportunities – and some reluctance – to reflect on its challenging aspects. In this article, we present subjective accounts of our everyday experiences of conducting participatory research as women researchers. We focus on four themes from our combined research experiences to explore some of the frustrations we encounter in participatory research. We argue that it is crucial to identify, reflect upon and address such aspects in academic outputs to broaden debates and scholarly discussions. We offer these reflections, and related strategies, as a contribution to critical debates on participatory research practice