It's all about the journey...

This is the community blog for Refugee Week Scotland 2010. The theme in 2010 was 'journeys', so we asked people not only to blog about their Refugee Week events but about journeys they had made.

The journey continues

Another Refugee Week has come and gone – and this year’s was definitely one to be proud of!

This is the first time we’ve created a blog especially for Refugee Week Scotland and ‘It’s All About the Journey…’ proved a great success, thanks to all your contributions and support. It’s been a great way of sharing our Refugee Week experiences and hearing about yours.

Thank you all for supporting us, telling your friends about the blog and sending in your own contributions.  We’ll be back next year, blogging for Refugee Week Scotland 2011 – so keep an eye out for us then!

In the meantime, there are plenty of ways you can be kept up to date with the work of Scottish Refugee Council. Join us on Facebook and Twitter or sign up to our monthly e-newsletter. It’s full of our latest news, events, campaigns, policy research and more. Just visit the Scottish Refugee Council website and click the link on the right-hand side to register.

  

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Photographers in the making

On a sunny Saturday at the end of Refugee Week Scotland, Cranhill Arts went on a  journey to the Pollockshaws Carnival and the Saturday cafe at Kennishead community centre. They went armed with cameras to record the event. As you can see from their photos and the quotes below, they all had a great time.

 

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“I had a really lovely time. The cameras were fun to use and it was so nice to meet people who were dancing and laughing.”
Tina

 “I had one of the best days since I have been in Glasgow. I felt afraid to use the cameras at first then I really enjoyed myself. It was so much fun taking photos of the people dancing.” Florence

 “I can now see myself working for the media, a newspaper maybe (she laughs out loud with amazement that she even said that). Taking photos of people was a fun thing to do” Awa

 

 “Taking photos was good. I asked the police to take one of them. I have never spoken to the police before. I laughed at the babies dancing to the drums. Since I’ve been in Scotland I was afraid to go out as I feel so sad when people tell me to go back to my own country. So me and my children stay in the house as we feel safe there. But this day was great – I felt important using the Cameras.” Precious

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Films from CAMASS Safari Park Culture Day

On a wonderful sunny World Refugee Day, Sunday 20 June, the CAMASS community organisation headed out to Blair Drummon Safari Park near Stirling to celebrate Refugee Week with a day of Cameroonian culture, including an Afritude Fashion Show, Cameroonian drumming and Cameroonian music and dance. And the fun wasn't confined to the Cameroon. Here, blogger Ernest interviews one participant from the Ivory Coast:
 
 
Food from the Ivory Coast
 
 
Why this participant is wearing an Ivory Coast wig to support her team, and all African teams, taking part in the World Cup

My Refugee Week so far, by Jamie Spurway

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Friday 18th June and Saturday 19th June

It seems the one social event in the calendar of those working in Scotland’s refugee sector is the Red Cross Comedy Night.  I have been to the last three of these excellent stand up events and enjoy them almost as much for the opportunity to meet up with people I normally communicate with by email, as for the comedy itself.  Susan Calman returned as compere and was excellent.  She always manages to introduce the event in a way that avoids making light of a serious subject yet does not create an atmosphere of bleak oppression. 

The Red Cross film that started the evening contained, quite appropriately, some pretty harrowing images.  Not the average comedian's ideal mood setter, but Susan’s self-deprecating style quickly changed the tone.  The improvisation of Stu and Gary provided a fantastic warm up act before the headliner, Kevin Bridges, took the stage. 

Another outstanding night of comedy that will have brought Refugee Week to the attention of many, and, as the event was sold out, presumably raised funds for the vital work of the British Red Cross.

 

On Saturday came my final contribution to Refugee Week in Scotland 2010.  At the Thrive And Grow event in the Kelvingrove Museum I took the afternoon shift in hosting an information and activity stall.  The session was well attended by local families and our games of identifying and colouring refugee nationality flags was a wonderfully messy hit.  In the course of the afternoon I saw the Afghan and Somali flags redesigned many times with the full spectrum of colours.  One father encouraged me to send the new designs to the relevant embassies as suggestions of alternatives. 

Our asylum quiz for the adults was also popular and prompted some interesting discussions about common misperceptions about refugees.  I often feel that there is so much work to be done in this area and never the capacity to meet it.  My hope as always, is that as long as a handful more people have been provided with accurate information then they can better inform their own families, friends and colleagues.  Even if the children only took away with them the names of the main refugee nationalities they still have a greater awareness of the world around them.  Again I find myself coming back to Benjamin Zephaniah’s wonderful quote about Refugee Week:

 

“Refugee Week is important because it reminds us that refugees are not just statistics to be used an abused, they are living, breathing people. I am British, I was born here and I have no intention of leaving here, so I want to create a society here where compassion is built into our culture, in this society we will be so aware of the world around us that we will not need a Refugee Week. Until then this is how we do it.”

Benjamin Zephaniah, Poet 

 

I hope that if nothing else, the events that I have participated in during this year’s Refugee Week will have contributed to a greater awareness of the world around us. 

Happy Refugee Week all, Jamie

Refugee Week Scotland Media Awards 2010

On Friday 18 June, Oxfam Scotland held Media Awards for the journalists who carry out fair reporting of asylum seekers in Scotland's press, in the Victoria Bar of the Tron theatre.

Most of the time the stories about people who seek asylum in the UK and their living conditions in the UK’s immigration system don’t have a chance to raise their voices. Often it is difficult to tell the reality of their situation. So this event encourages the journalists who have helped and supported the fair reporting of asylum seekers and have covered the positive image of asylum seekers. The stories entered into the Refugee Week Scotland Media Awards were reported between 1 May 2009 and 30 April 2010.

The Refugee Week Scotland Media Awards are organised by Oxfam Scotland and it is supported by Scottish Refugee Council, the NUJ (National Union of Journalists), British Red Cross and the UN Refugee Agency. This year Scotland Media Awards had nominations from 5 categories;

National Print, Local Print, Broadcast, Photography, and the New Voices Student Journalism Award.

On the event day there were journalists and other media professionals at Victoria Bar. There were 3 nominees from each category. The program started with a short introduction and then for each category the presenter introduced briefly each nominee and their work for asylum seekers.

Billy Briggs won the first prize of National Print for his story, "In Search of Refuge” published in The Herald Magazine. Caroline Wilson won the first prize of Local Print for her story, “No Place for Us” which was published in The Evening Times. STV News won the first prize of Broadcast for the story, “Kosovo to Glasgow” by its reporter Mike Edwards. Colin Mearns won the first prize of the photography for the, “Red Road Tragedy” which was published in Sunday Herald/Herald. And finally the New Voices Student Journalism Award went to Sabrina Ramzan for, “A Journey to Remember" and to Martin Graham for, “Red Road Stories” which was published in the Sunday Herald.

I could find some journalists who won the first prize to do a quick interview which was so exciting.  

National Print
Stephen Naysmith, The Story of the Red Road Tragedy, Sunday Herald (Runner up)
Catherine Deveney, Gimme Shelter, Spectrum Magazine, Scotland on Sunday
Billy Briggs, In Search of Refuge, The Herald Magazine  (First Prize)

Local Print
Lynsey Bews, Return to Rwanda, Fife Free Press
Caroline Wilson, No Place for Us, The Evening Times (First Prize)
David Clegg, Asylum Seeker's Heroism Award, Dundee Courier (Runner up)

Broadcast
BBC Scotland, Newsnight Scotland, 25th Anniversary of Scottish Refugee Council (Fiona Walker, reporter)
STV News, Kosovo to Glasgow (Mike Edwards, reporter) (First Prize)
Radio Clyde News Team, coverage of Red Road Tragedy (Runner up)

Photography
Maurice MacDonald (Universal News and Sport), Hoops Home Help, published in the Daily Record (Runner up)
Colin Mearns, Red Road Tragedy, Sunday Herald/Herald (First Prize)
Kirsty Anderson, In Search of Refuge, Herald Magazine

The New Voices Student Journalism Award
Sabrina Ramzan, A Journey to Remember
Martin Graham, Red Road Stories (published in the Sunday Herald)

By: M.F.

 

 

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Comedy Night with Kevin Bridges

 

Red cross Refugee Week Comedy night was one of the funniest nights in Refugee Week. Kevin Bridges performed at Tron on the Friday 18th June at 8pm compered by Susan Calman, with support from Gary and Stuart. The event was organised by British Red Cross.

Tron had one of its busy nights. The tickets were sold out. Susan, Gary and Stuart performance was before the break. They were amazing at their improvised scenes. After break Kevin was the star. He stuck the audiences on their seats with his fascinating performance. The audiences were pleased about the whole of the show.

Kevin Bridges has been involved in the Refugee Week for the third time with his enchanting shows in last 3 years. He is one of the nice guys who support asylum seekers and refugees. After the show I had an opportunity to have a quick chat with him, and he answered friendly my questions. I was thinking how comedy and asylum seekers can be related?

By: M.F.

 

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And the winner is.....

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There were lots of very worthy winners at this year's Refugee Week Scotland Media Awards, organised by Oxfam Scotland and supported by the Red Cross magazine New Voices. Here's Billy Briggs, winner of the national press award, talking about his piece in the Herald magazine. [Interview by blogger M.F.]

The storyteller’s night: this time, Talking about Jane Austen in Baghdad


War is hell and it damages everybody’s life, but the dictator regime is worse. Sometimes it is good to have somebody from the outside of the prison; it may be the only reason to give you hope. It would be more astonishing if you have never seen the person on the other side of the wall, and living with its imagination, creating her face in your mind whether he or she exists or not is always your question.

May Witwit was one of the lucky ones, she never imagined finding a friend from the outside of Iraq who afterwards changes her destiny.

The book event was on Thursday 17th June, 6pm at Mitchell library.

The performance began after we were introduced to the two guests, May Witwit and Bee Rowlatt. They read their emails for the audience, one by one, and if anywhere it needed more explaining they remembered their memories and their feelings at that time of the email. It was a lovely show. When they finished their reading the audience asked different and interesting questions which they answered patiently.   

Well comparing two different lives, and two different situations, was the one of the main strengths of this true story. One lives in the peace, the other lives in the chaos of horror. May is one of the millions of women in Iraq who lost their life under the shadow of religion. She said that the women are being killed in Iraq just because of refusing to put on the veil. The fear of being killed or tortured has become a part of their life.

Another point is these two women although they live in different cultures, they still have something in common, to take care of their family and share their laughs, sadness, dreams, fears and finally gossip.

The friendship began after Bee was looking for an Iraqi to ask about how was the people’s life in Iraq during Saddam Hossein’s government, for a Radio station in 2005. With a mutual friend finally she found Bee.

The correspondence started by emails, and afterwards it became regular. May was teaching at university at that moment and she could speak English as she spent her childhood in the UK when her parents were studying at the UK’s University. So the language wasn’t a barrier to continuing the relationship.

With all those difficulties that Iraqi’s people and May had to face after passing through Iran’s war and Kuwait’s war, again another war began; the war between Iraq and the United State. USA occupied Iraq, Saddam Hossein was arrested and executed. Every day the situation became worse and worse. Living in the ruined homes and lacking of security and with shortages of the essentials such as water, food and electricity - released the religious to take the governments seats.

 It caused another problem. The religious men pointed to academic people at university. Killing the academics was another problem. At that time Bee was trying to find a way to help May to escape from the hell.

“I haven’t broken the law but at the first time I would do it to save your life” this was the sentences that the Bee was remembering in the event night.

After many times attempting May could get a student visa for her study at PHD in the UK. Then for the first time they embraced each other with tears at the airport in the UK.

The whole story is like a fiction story but when I saw them at Mitchell library, the characters of the book “Talking about Jane Austen in Baghdad” turned into reality.

I wish for a free world where everybody lives in peace and freedom, in equality.

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My Refugee Week so far, by Jamie Spurway

Wednesday 16th June – Happy Birthday Scottish Refugee Council

 

Another busy day, which included a tour of the political and historical highlights of Edinburgh – Scottish Parliament in the afternoon and Edinburgh Castle in the evening. The castle event was the celebration of 25 years of Scottish Refugee Council.  And we don’t look a day over 20! 

 

A suitably diverse group attended the celebration, which was organised by the Scottish Government in recognition of the organisation’s work over the quarter of a century that we have been operating.  The castle proved an excellent venue with its extraordinary views, grand hall and thankfully modern plumbing.  

Speeches from our Chair, David Fraser, reminded us of the journey that the organisation itself has taken over its two and half decades. From a small flat in Edinburgh, we have changed locations a number of times as the nature of our work has changed. 

From supporting refugees from Vietnam and Chile after its inception in 1985, through the Bosnian and Kosovan programmes in the early nineties, and through the huge changes that came with the start of the dispersal process in 2000, the organisation has evolved in response to an ever-changing environment.  In its current form, and from its current base in the centre of Glasgow, we support around 3000 people through the asylum process each year.

A highlight of the evening for me was the reading of a message from the Nelson Mandela Foundation, congratulating the organisation on its “birthday”.  As Brian Filling, the honorary consul for South Africa rightly observed, Mandela is emblematic of a struggle to create a more tolerant society.  We are delighted that he continues to be our patron. 

The nature of the organisation’s work is to respond to a climate of intolerance, hostility and misunderstanding of refugees.  With that in mind I hope that in 25 years time there will be no need for a Scottish Refugee Council.  Sadly, there is little sign that will be the case. 

 

 





              
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