Refugee Tales is a fascinating example of\u00a0an\u00a0outreach project that\u00a0deploys\u00a0cultural tools in\u00a0engaging with communities to influence\u00a0change at multiple levels.\u00a0Building directly on his individual research into the linguistic exclusion of people who have experienced detention, David Herd, Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Kent\u2019s School of English helped co-found the Refugee Tales project\u00a0in collaboration with Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group\u00a0in 2015.\u00a0\u2018Refugee Tales\u2019, is an advocacy and protest project that\u00a0marries\u00a0the worlds of political activism, literature, theatre and history in calling for an end to the UK\u2019s policy of indefinite detention of migrants and asylum seekers.<\/p>\n
Currently in the UK there is no limit to the duration of time that asylum seekers may be detained in Immigration Removal Centres, and \u2018Refugee Tales\u2019 protests this state of affairs.\u00a0The project\u2019s explicit aim is to end such incarceration\u00a0through\u00a0political activism. At\u00a0another\u00a0level, it\u00a0contributes to a\u00a0change\u00a0in\u00a0discourse\u00a0on\u00a0immigration, to\u00a0develop\u00a0a culture that never denies refugees their humanity.\u00a0The project brings together refugees, writers, poets, actors, musicians, filmmakers and other creatives in achieving its goals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Refugee Tales project is inspired by the experiences of people held in immigration detention at Gatwick,\u00a0telling the stories of people affected by immigration detention. Drawing upon Chaucer\u2019s Canterbury Tales, the project\u00a0comprises collections of tales published in textual editions alongside a political campaign to call\u00a0for\u00a0an end to the practice of indefinite detention of asylum seekers in the United Kingdom.\u00a0The tales that are told take the form of an established writer giving voice to those that are caught up in this inhuman process. Some of the oral narratives come from refugees, some from care-workers and supporters, and some from those caught up in the institutional processes of bureaucracy.<\/p>\n The project\u00a0centres on an\u00a0ongoing series of large-scale public walks\u00a0in solidarity with Refugees, Asylum Seekers and people being held in detention. The walk\u00a0is\u00a0designed to raise awareness of the situation of those held in indefinite detention in the UK\u00a0and\u00a0the cruelty of\u00a0it.\u00a0\u00a0Participants\u00a0walk across South East England, and tales about detainees are told by well-known writers, poets, artistes and academicians, alongside first-person accounts of the realities of detention.\u00a0Literary texts,\u00a0historical sites and documents are also linked creatively to asylum seekers\u2019 histories.<\/p>\n As Co-Director of the project, Professor David Herd has been integral to all aspects of its organisation and execution throughout. In particular, he has led its cultural inquiry through the commissioning of co-produced tales, the mentoring of people writing first-person testimony, the co-editing of the project\u2019s volumes, and the constant articulation of the project\u2019s findings through essays, broadcasts, and at numerous high-profile political events. In particular, he has framed the space in which published stories are shared, through the verse \u2018Prologues\u2019 and discursive \u2018Afterwords\u2019 he has contributed to each volume. Herd\u2019s contribution to migration studies through Refugee Tales has been extensively discussed in articles and essays.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sunder Mahendra explores how scholars are using the power of stories to influence positive social change. Refugee Tales is a fascinating example of\u00a0an\u00a0outreach project that\u00a0deploys\u00a0cultural … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51475,"featured_media":139,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[262618],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/public-engagement-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/public-engagement-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/public-engagement-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/public-engagement-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/public-engagement-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/public-engagement-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/public-engagement-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions\/140"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/public-engagement-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/public-engagement-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/public-engagement-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/public-engagement-case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"graph\"](\"https:\/\/media.www.kent.ac.uk\/se\/24924\/Refugeetalespic2_inline.jpg\")
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