Join us online for conversation looking at the work refugee and non-refugee artists, academics, activists and art spaces are doing at the intersection where forced migration and the arts meet.
- 2.00-3.30pm UK time (with Matthew Hahn, Dr Tetyana Hnatyuk, and Innocent Creus Rugamba),
- 4.00-5.30pm UK time (with Samuel Hatungimana, Kat Velastegui, and Sophie Watt), and
- 6.00-7.30pm UK time (with Malka Al Haddad and Loraine Masiya Mponela). (More detail follows below).
THE SESSIONS
2.00pm - 3.30pm (UK Time): Session 1: Theatre, Visual Arts & Moving Images
Matthew Hahn, an international theatre director, playwright and theatre for development facilitator, post-graduate with experience of creating, coordinating and implementing theatre projects in the United Kingdom, the United States, East & Southern Africa. He is also the Artistic Director of the Folkestone Performing Arts Company, an artist-led international theatre ensemble creating vibrant, relevant and compelling theatre through the celebration of local stories in Folkestone, UK. Currently, Hahn is working with refugees and asylum seekers at Napier Barracks, Folkestone.
Dr Tetyana Hnatyuk, a human migration researcher with 20 years of experience in the field, has a PhD degree in Political Science and a research focus on forced migration (internally displaced persons, refugees, asylum seekers). She is the author of more than 60 publications and has experience working in the migration sphere for a British local authority-led partnership, international organisation (the UNHCR), local NGOs, Ukrainian governmental authorities and academia. Hnatyuk has been a participant of the Ukrainian Sponsorship Scheme “Homes for Ukraine” in the UK since September 2022. In June 2023, she joined a British local authority-led partnership Migration Yorkshire (Leeds, UK) as a community researcher and worked on a research project on Ukrainians in the UK via the “Homes for Ukraine” programme. “Living Your Life in Someone Else’s Home”, the second part of the research project focuses on hospitality from guest perspectives.
Innocent Creus Rugamba, a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo since 2012, spent 12 years in Uganda, where he witnessed first-hand the challenges faced by refugees: food shortages, educational barriers, and livelihood struggles. Despite fleeing his homeland after completing secondary school with dreams of becoming a doctor, conflict shattered those aspirations. Rugamba then began teaching English to adults in the settlement and co-founded a refugee-led organisation focused on adult literacy and financial management training. Now, pursuing a Master’s Degree in International Relations at the University of Cagliari in Italy on a scholarship, his goal is to leverage his experiences and education to advocate for refugee rights and access to education.
4.00pm - 5.30pm (UK Time): Session 2: Theatre, Visual Arts & Crafts
Samuel Hatungimana, a Burundian refugee who has lived in Kakuma Refugee Camp of Kenya for 11 years, did both his primary and secondary education in the camp, finishing in the year 2021. After graduating from high school, he volunteered as an incentive teacher in his former school for one year where he taught Swahili language to students in Grade 9 and 10. In 2022, he joined Elimisha Kakuma, a college preparatory program which helps high achieving students to apply for college admission and scholarships. Hatungimana secured a full scholarship at Elmhurst University and was able to move to the US in the fall 2023 to start his higher education studies, majoring in Computer Science and Digital Media.
Kat Velastegui, a New York-born, Ecuadorian researcher and photographer. After her graduate studies in International Migration and Public Policy at the London School of Economics, Velastegui dedicated her time to exploring culture, identity, Latin American diasporas and the digital environment. Her work highlights Latinx diaspora creatives‘ artistic expressions and resistance beyond borders (e.g. geographical, identitarian, physical, institutional), aiming to raise the lived-experiences and creative processes of an often overlooked and invisibilized community. Her current visual project, 'Márgenes' (Spanish for 'Margins') is a curatorial platform weaving together the tapestry of Latinx diaspora creatives’ art and lived-experiences beyond borders. This exploration unfolds at the intersection of identity construction, subcultures and creative processes intricately intertwined with the threads of migratory narratives. At the heart of "Márgenes" lies the radical notion that re-imagining the meaning of transnational communities, reclaiming collective joy and daring to envision the possibility of alternative realities is not only necessary - but rather, an urgent act of resistance.
Sophie Watt, a lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Sheffield. Watt specialises in colonial, neocolonial history and migration studies in the Francophone world and has been working on alternative representation of migration for a number of years. Recently, she conducted field work in Calais and Dunkirk that was informed by work with Franco-Swiss photographer Elisa Larvego, on alternative representation of migration. Her work includes the exhibition, 'The going towards' presented at the Site Gallery in Sheffield last October/November and also exhibited in Geneva under the title 'En tous lieux' from September to December.
6pm - 7.30pm (UK Time): Session 3: The Poetry of Forced Migration - Malka al-Haddad and Loraine Masiya Mponela: In Conversation
Poets and City of Sanctuary Ambassadors, Malka al-Haddad and Loraine Masiya Mponela will read and discuss each other's and their own work and share insights and reflections on the influences they draw on in their writing and activism.
Malka Al Haddad, the author of The Truth at the End of the Night (Palewell Press Ltd, 2023) and Birds Without Sky: Poems from exile (Harriman House Ltd, 2018). Malka grew up during the Iran-Iraq war and lost several close family members during the first Gulf War and American invasion in 2003. She became a poet and a human rights advocate, which attracted hostility towards her in Iraq. While she was studying English in preparation for her PhD in the UK, death threats against her escalated and she couldn't return back to her beloved home and family. Malka's asylum claim was continually refused by the Home Office and after 11 years, she was eventually granted leave to remain, but without access to public funding. She is now an ambassador for City of Sanctuary in the UK. Malka's pain and anger on behalf of all those caught up in the UK asylum system give her poetry a passionate strength and urgency.Loraine Masiya Mponela, a migrants rights campaigner, community organiser, City of Sanctuary ambassador, and the author of Now I Sing: 50 poems to celebrate 50 years (Independently published, 2024) and I Was Not Born a Sad Poet (Independently published, 2022). Loraine was born and raised in Malawi, and currently lives in England, UK. A writer of poetry, comedy and articles, her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, journals, and magazines.
[1] Sunday Lawrence, a refugee from South Sudan and a second year Law student at the International University of East Africa in Kampala, Uganda is appealing for support. Lawrence needs to raise €5,256 for tuition and sustenance so that he can finish his studies. Any support you can give him will be most appreciated.
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