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“I liked writing about my mother’s pumpkin curry and the smell of my mother country after the rain.”
We run a variety of different creative projects including writing, craft, movement and drama.
Creative Writing Pilot Project
In a relaxed and gentle setting we worked with a smaller group of women to support them in finding their unique writing voices.
During the weekly 2 hour sessions we all wrote, reflecting and sharing with each other, even if English was not our first language. We described memories of our favourite meals from childhood, used artistic postcards as a prompt, wrote from the point of view of an animal and then guessed who was what creature. This was a lot of fun.
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Once we had bonded as a group we delved a bit deeper and we used our 5 senses to describe a place we had visited and wanted to return to. We also appreciated poetry from each other’s home countries. It was moving and inspiring to read political writing by Maya Angelou and write our own versions of ‘Still I Rise’.
“I loved writing like this. I feel there should be more time and places for us to tell our stories and write our dreams in this busy life.”
“It was hard to write in English so sometimes I used my mother tongue. But I know that storytelling is good to practice english. It can make you feel happy and free.”
“I liked writing about my mother’s pumpkin curry and the smell of my mother country after the rain.”
The Freedom of Swifts
The women created beautiful art inspired by the journeys of migratory birds like Swifts, that fly from Africa to Europe and then fly back to Africa, every year. Swifts are extraordinary because they complete a round trip of approximately 14000 miles, flying through around 25 different countries. They have a wonderfully airborne life; sleeping, drinking and eating on the wing. The lives of Swifts became a point of fascination and inspiration to the group, as they are stateless, unbound by human laws and move through life with unfettered freedom, gracefully driven by their need for breeding and sustenance. Pure joy!
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“We are asylum seekers, we are flying to freedom.Birds fly higher and higher, like us.
We have many stories, but we are moving to a better place.”
“I love this because I don’t do this in normal life, I wouldn’t have the ideas.
But now, maybe when I’m at home, I can get a piece of paper and do some drawing.”
