Write Here - Writing for Refugees
Multilingual writing workshops for refugees, England
Info
- Project date: Summer 2017
- Project location: Leicester, England
- Project partners: Writing East Midlands, Leicester City of Sanctuary
Overview
This was our very first project: a series of workshops with refugee writers in the city of Leicester. We decided when we set up the workshops that we wanted them to be about writing and storytelling, rather than English-language classes. So we made the decision that we would encourage writers to write in whatever language they felt comfortable.
It was our first time experimenting with multilingual creative writing workshops. And it was a delight to hear stories in Swahili, Arabic, Persian, Hindi, English, French and many more languages.
When it came to sharing, we asked participants to introduce their stories with a sentence or two in English, so that listeners could understand the context. Then we asked them to read in whatever language the story was written in.
Project Outcomes
This was our first ever project working as Wind&Bones, and it gave us a chance to develop and hone our approach to multilingual writing workshops.