Pass the Crayon

Our 'Artist of the Week' post for this week is dedicated to the wild and wonderful Flying Seagulls Project- the travelling circus collective bringing smiles and laughter to thousands of kids living in some of the most precarious and deprived places in the world. I speak with some of the Flying Seagulls' European Team, and ask them about their work...

With over 65 million refugees worldwide and an average protracted displacement period now estimated at 26 years, entire generations of migrant children are growing up in host countries- very often, in the confines of migrant camps. 

With insufficient funding and lack of infrastructure, camp life is hard. Every day, families struggle to find enough food and clean water to sustain themselves. With all the immediate concerns of survival, and a huge psychological burden of uncertainty, parents are often too preoccupied, and downright exhausted, to play with their children.

Tragically, only 50% of...

On International Women's Day, I attended 'Frauen und Flucht: Vulnerabilität – Empowerment – Teilhabe', an event which gave a platform for grassroots female refugee initiatives to discuss ways in which we can start to prioritize refugee women's voices more within the wider refugee discourse.

On March the 8th, I saw a lot of women walking around holding red roses (at first I was confused before guessing it had something to do with IWD), and later on, as I walked along Kottbusser Damm, I encountered the International Women's Day March itself- banners with empowering slogans waved proudly in the air, papier mache vaginas floated in the breeze, voices boomed from megaphones and music pumped from speakers. I turned down Lenaustrasse feeling pleased that I had witnessed the march, and invigorated for tonight's event. I arrived at Refugio, the community space for refugees, and host for "Women and Flight: Vulnerability, Empowerment and Parti...

This week we welcomed Wolffy, Curly, Kaddy and Pasquale, our clown friends from 'The Flying Seagulls Project', for two extras-special workshops filled with music, smiles and... plates!

WEDDING

This week at studio Voodoo55, we did  ink drop art! We especially love to do this activity with the kids because the fluidity of the ink, and the vibrancy of the colours makes for a really fun creative experience- and produces some beautiful pieces of art! It also helps to add a sense of freedom to the artistic process- ink, as a mode of expression, can only be controlled to a certain degree- the trick to great ink painting is to guide the ink, but to also let it combine, drip, splash and swirl on its own, with wonderful results.

"This week there was a really beautiful energy between the volunteers and the kids- and amongst the kids themselves! We did one of our favourite art techniques at PTC- ink drop painting. It was great to see how much the children enjoyed discovering and experi...

(No, this isn't a rave), it's our latest installment of PTC Weekly! In this week's article we talk houses, hoods and jungle speed :)

WEDDING

As you know, we are now hosting workshops, every Wednesday afternoon, at Voodoo55, our partner studio space in Wedding, and last week's theme was 'Neighbours'.

Voodoo55 is our first ever permanent workshop space, separate to the shelters that we visit, and we are super excited about the opportunity that this gives us for creative freedom, and collaboration. By offering regular art workshops to all children from the local area, we hope to create a community satellite, where refugee youth from the local shelters and  kids who live in the surrounding neighborhood, can come together, in a safe and neutral space, to make art.

As this is only our first month, we are still building our numbers, but last week we had five children from the nearby Wedding shelter, and one child from outside the shelter. We were especially pleased to see Haye...

Israel’s new migration policy has been met with strong condemnation from the international community, and from Israeli citizens themselves. I recently attended the event, ‘Refugee Crisis in Israel: Live Witness Accounts’ to find out more about this issue.

(torture method used in Eritrea- drawn by an Eritrean, and provided to the UN Commission of Inquiry)

The Eritrean refugee community, along with other African minority groups have been living peacefully in Israel for many years under "temporary protection"- they can speak Hebrew, they work, and some have started families of their own. They have applied for asylum, but their applications have either been ignored, or declined. Despite asylum acceptance rates for Eritreans in the EU resting at 91.4%, only 10 Eritreans and 1 Sudanese have been accepted as refugees in Israel- this is despite Israel being one of the first countries to sign the 1961 UN Refugee Declaration.

After explaining the history of migrants in Israel, Itay Mashia...