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About Refugee Week

Refugee Week is an annual event aimed at celebrating asylum seekers and refugees living in the UK through arts, cultural, educational events and activities designed to encourage community participation. 

Refugee Week 2024 will be from 17 to 23 June 2024 and the theme this year is "Our Home".

Find out about events taking place throughout the week below.

Home: A Group Art Exhibition

A group exhibition, including work from the Stories & Supper community, alongside photo portraits of the group by photographer Laura Martinez. Plus, work from students at Leyton Sixth Form College exploring the theme of home and belonging.

Collective Artwork Workshop with Tasnim Mahdy

More information coming soon.

Employability Workshop: Job Search Essentials

Join Catch 22 for an exciting employment and training related workshop.

10:00am to 11:00am Start your job search with essential tips and tools for all first-time job seekers. Learn how to use your skills, where you can use them and how to job search.

11:00am to 12:00pm Enhance your job search skills with tried and tested hints, tips and tools for the more experienced job seeker. Join the talk for information on Transferable Skills, the local transport network and the Hidden Job Market. 

  • Wednesday 19 June 2024, 10am to 12pm 
  • Lea Bridge Library, Lea Bridge Road, E10 7HU
  • Free and open to all 

Laff-Uccino Comedy Night

HAVEN Coffee is a social enterprise with a mission of serving ethically sourced, fair-trade, organic cups of speciality coffee with a social mission of breaking false narratives around refugees and migrants through arts and culture. They do it by promoting artists from a refugee background and their artwork in an effort to bring refugee communities and UK society together. 

Laff-Uccino is part of this social mission and started in December 2019 and this will be the eight instalment of it. The line-up includes some very talented and Funny comedians from refugee and migrant backgrounds performing for their very first, second, or third gig, refugees from our stand-up workshop participants, and some old horses of the stage, including Rosie Jones, Rhys James, Kiri Pritchard-McLean on MC, and a very special Guest Headliner, Nish Kumar.

There will be a Free Raffle on the night with a chance to win some very good prizes!

Children’s Arts and Crafts, Magic Performance, Henna Artist, and Knitting

Come along to Lea Bridge Library to celebrate with arts and crafts activities for children over 5 yrs old, henna artists and an extraordinary knitting session for adults. Then from 4:30 pm, join us for a fabulous family friendly magic show with Jamie Jibberish.

  • Thursday 20 June 2024, 3pm to 5.30pm 
  • Lea Bridge Library, Lea Bridge Road, E10 7HU
  • Free and open to all

Wildlife Walk for Refugee Week

To celebrate this year’s Refugee Week ‘Our Home’, come visit the reserve on this after hours guided walk, explore nature and delve into what home means to you.

  • Thursday 20 June 2024, 6pm to 7.30pm
  • Walthamstow Wetlands, 2 Forest Road, N17 9NH 
  • Organised by London Wildlife Trust 
  • Tickets available online

Refugee Fashion Exhibition and Product Sale

Exhibition and sale of fashion products made by refugees expressing their personal and cultural identity.

  • Thursday 20 June 2024, 6pm to 8pm
  • Rosetta Arts, 1 Hamilton Road, E15 3AE
  • Organised by Centre for Sustainable Fashion, UA 

The Taste of Home: A Community Feast 

A free community feast for refugees, people seeking asylum and the organisations and individuals that support them.

Collective Artwork Party with Tasnim Mahdy

LifeLine

Artist Lucy Orta invites audiences to dialogue with a series of Lifeline, soft textile objects made from calico fabric that can be manipulated and worn. This participatory action builds on collaborative workshops that explore the lived experiences and challenges that refugees and asylum seekers face on arrival in the UK, as well as the opportunities to rebuild their lives in the new place of resettlement.

•    Friday 21 June 2024, 3pm to 5pm 
•    Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL
•    Organised by Centre for Sustainable Fashion, UAL
•    Free, open to all
•    For more information email l.orta@fashion.arts.ac.uk  

Fashioning Stories of Change

To mark this year’s Refugee Week, the ‘Decolonising Fashion and Textiles’ team from the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, UAL are taking over two gallery spaces at the V&A with two interactive performances featuring refugee participants modelling culturally meaningful clothes they created in the project. Come and join us for this celebration of refugees’ craft skills, personal and cultural identities, and stories of positive change, shaped through fashion.

•    Friday 21 June 2024, 2.30pm to 3pm and 5pm to 5.30pm 
•    Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL
•    Organised by Centre for Sustainable Fashion, UAL
•    Free, open to all
•    Find out more

Making Home: A Collaborative Embroidery

Join Stories & Supper to contribute to a collaborative embroidery on the theme of home. Add a word, an image or just a stitch to help us re-imagine what home means. Plus, enjoy pop-up poetry readings while you sew.

•    Saturday 22 June 2024, 11am to 2pm 
•    William Morris Gallery, Lloyd Park, Forest Rd, London E17 4PP
•    Organised by Stories & Supper, and William Morris Gallery
•    For more information email helen@storiesandsupper.co.uk