Refugee Week: words, music, resistance
Quakers around the country have marked Refugee Week with arts, cultural and social events
Quakers up and down the country have been engaged in events to highlight Refugee Week.
Friends have hosted and organised a range of arts, cultural and social events to mark the twentieth nationwide celebration, which runs from 18-24 June, and, in particular, to highlight World Refugee Day on 20 June.
Paul Parker, recording clerk for Britain Yearly Meeting, said: ‘People across society are responding to violence and abuse with creativity. They are building the kind of world that they want to live in.’
Friends House in London hosted an evening of ‘Spoken Word, Music and Resistance’ with ‘These Walls Must Fall’, while the Quaker Centre Bookshop invited author Cynthia Cockburn to discuss her latest book Looking to London: Stories of War, Escape and Asylum, with a performance by the Refugee Voices Choir.
Lauren Cape-Davenhill, ‘These Walls Must Fall’ campaign coordinator, said: ‘When we unite across our communities, build power and fight back, we are strong and we will win. Watch out hostile environment – the walls are coming down!’
It was also a week of local grassroots action. Cambridge Friends hosted a free talk on ‘Ending Indefinite Detention’, which was held at the Jesus Lane Meeting House, on 18 June.
Quakers at Wells-next-the-Sea Meeting House in Norfolk encouraged people to donate bicycles to refugees, by building a collection point for unwanted bikes and spare parts, in support of the Welcome Wheels project.
Mary Cundy, who set the initiative up, told the Friend: ‘Refugees need to get around to all kinds of different appointment, because it’s hard work getting registered, so having a bicycle can save time and money. Also, if you want to get away from it all, you can.’ Another local Friend, Gill Smith, spoke on Radio Norfolk about the action.
Huddersfield Friends organised a ‘family-friendly multi-faith picnic’ at their Meeting house on 24 June and Glasgow Meeting held a ‘welcoming’ afternoon of music, storytelling and conversation, called ‘Strangers? Just Friends We Have Not Met Yet’.
A Glasgow Friend said that the event, which was part of Refugee Festival Scotland 2018, was organised to mark ‘the estimated 10,000 refugees living in Glasgow’.
Quaker Molly Scott Cato, Green MEP for the South West, and Imogen McIntosh, from Aid Box Community Hub, gave a talk on ‘The Refugee Crisis: a View from Europe’ at Redland Meeting House on 23 June.
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