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Dialogues Across Borders

Updated Wednesday, 14 June 2023

Abdul Rahman Haroun walked from France to the United Kingdom. On A Wing And A Prayer is a response to that journey.

A discussion as part of Dialogues Across Borders

Marie Gillespie of The Open University and artists Elena Boukouvala and Knut Bry, met while they were volunteering at Pikpa refugee camp in Lesvos in the summer of 2016. They decided to work together with refugees in the camp to tell the story of the refugee experiences in new ways. The result was Dialogues Across Borders, an interactive exhibition sparked from the friendships forged blurring the boundaries between refugees, volunteers and artists.

Dialogues Across Borders questions and explores who we are to each other as the 'refugee crisis' unfolds. In 2016 a makeshift photography and poetry exhibition was co-created by refugees and volunteers at Pikpa Camp on the Greek island of Lesvos. The transnational friendships forged in this context and sustained by social media became the catalyst to a series of travelling interactive exhibitions across Europe.

In a series of workshops, the sharing of experiences through poetry, photography, art, theatre and music created a fertile environment for a rich and intimate cross-cultural exchange in which audiences were invited to make their own artworks (including designing bags made from refugee life jacket), building an evolving web of dialogues across borders.

They asked questions such as:

  • Who are we and who are we becoming in our responses to the ‘refugee crisis’?
  • Through playful co-creations and artful interventions how can we co-create new understandings of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ – including a better understanding of the meanings and limits of hospitality and solidarity?
  • What does it mean politically to bring playful co-creations and artworks into a context that is determined by legal and media discourses?
  • Can playful artwork help us relate to each other in new ways? 

You can find out more about these workshops on the short video postcard that we produced:

The Dialogues Across Borders project blurred the boundaries between artists, academics, activists, volunteers and refugees. It sought to break the national, physical and imaginative borders that separate and divide us through co-creating artworks.

Elena Boukouvala, a performance activist, drama therapist and founder of Play is Hope directed the Dialogues Across Borders project and the workshops.

Marie and Elena worked with the renowned Norwegian photographer Knut Bry, whose photographs, taken on successive fieldtrips to Lesvos, offered a humane, poignant yet ultimately uplifting representation of refugees rebuilding lives in contexts of profound uncertainty.

Marie’s collaborative research on smartphones and refugees and the poetry and photo exhibition she co-created with refugees at Pikpa Camp formed the basis of two of the workshops. 

Elena’s travelling exhibition which she took to many cities across the world as part of Play is Hope project forged new relationships with refugees and artists and some of them  joined us at the Tate by videolink from Greece to co-create songs and poems on themes of belonging, togetherness and migration on the spot.

Our workshops attracted audiences from Germany and France with visitors from London and included musicians from Greece and Play is Hope project. These workshops created new artworks based on the connections  built around solidarities with refugees.

 

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