Refugee Week: Shared Acts of Courage

Refugee Week celebrates the courage, creativity, and contributions of refugees and people seeking sanctuary. Join us for a day of drop-in workshops.

The programme includes:

Simple Act of Sharing a Meal: Zine Making
Drop-in, 11:00-16:00
What spice or herb reminds you of home? 

Do you have a favourite bowl, pot, jar, tin or plate?
Come and explore these questions with us as we share our food stories through a free creative zine. This collaborative zine created with West London Welcome celebrates food as a vessel for bringing people together and expressing our cultural identities and memories. Inside, you'll find spaces to write, draw, reflect, and imagine.
Learning Centre Reception

Simple Act of Sharing a Seat: Weaving Workshop
Drop-in, 11:00-16:00
The Hugging Bench is a collaborative artwork created with participants at Earl’s Court Community Cafe for refugee and asylum seekers. Exploring seating as a shared space for rest, encounter and connection and through collaborative weaving activities, participants contributed to a growing textile structure inspired by charpoy beds, woven seating traditions and furniture held within the V&A collection. 

 

Visitors are invited to add colours, patterns and textiles that are meaningful to them, transforming the bench into a shared seat shaped by many hands. 

 

Led by Antropia, a collective dedicated to the advancement of art, culture and wellbeing through participatory practice.  

Earl’s Court Community Cafe, organised by HTB Church and Hillsong Church, has served as a lifeline for asylum seekers in West London since 2021. They provide more than just practical support and language skills; they provide a friendly face and a place to belong.  

The Garden

Reimagining Sound Together with Play for Progress
Drop-in
14:00-16:00 
Take part in a workshop with Play for Progress to make your own unique instruments using found materials. This family-friendly session encourages us to reimagine everyday objects and find new ways to make music in playful non-traditional ways. Join us to tap into the healing power of music through collaborative making.

16:00 -16:30 

Use the instruments made during the drop-in to join young people from Play for Progress for an informal pop-up performance. Get ready to join in!  
 

Play for Progress is a Croydon-based charity that tap into the healing power of music, the arts, play, and creative therapies to build healthy and resilient relationships that support and amplify the voices of unaccompanied asylum-seeking young people. Join us as we work to cultivate a more playful, peaceful, creative, and compassionate society in which we can all connect, heal, and grow.

The Garden

Crafts of Resistance: Loom Weaving
Drop-in, 11:00-16:00
Join Hurriya Arts for a drop-in collective loom weaving workshop celebrating the power of craft, community, and cultural resilience for Refugee Week 2026.  
 

Participants are invited to contribute to a large-scale woven artwork using recycled materials, fabric scraps, and yarn. Together, we will explore how weaving has long served as a form of cultural preservation, knowledge-sharing, and resistance, carrying stories and traditions across generations and borders. 

This workshop honours traditional methods of making found across the Global South, particularly those sustained and innovated by women.  

 

Open to all ages and abilities, this drop-in activity offers a space to connect, create, and contribute to a shared artwork that grows throughout the day. 

 

Facilitated by Zafeerah Heesambee, an interdisciplinary artist and director of Hurriya Arts; a creative studio centering arts as a force for healing, justice, and collective power for communities across the UK. Through collaborative art practices, Hurriya Arts creates spaces for expression, learning, and social change.
Raphael Cartoon Gallery

Home, Heritage & Design: Design your own Somali Dabqaad
Drop-in, 11:00-16:00 
This hands-on family workshop introduces the rich traditions surrounding Somali incense burners and their place in the home. Through making and decorating a paper dabqaad inspired by traditional patterns and motifs, participants will explore cultural heritage, design, and the stories objects can tell. 
 

Led by Culture House, the UK’s first permanent exhibition and cultural space dedicated to Somali heritage. 
Digital Studio, Learning Centre

Simple Act of Planting a Seed: Clay Workshop
Drop-in, 11:00-16:00 
Join artist Jacqui Ramrayka for a clay workshop celebrating and the connections between nature, care, and migration. Participants are invited to create small clay seed pods or “guardians” that can hold real seeds or tiny natural treasures such as feathers, shells, or dried leaves, and contribute them to a communal display developed with participants from Notre Dame Refugee Centre. Inspired by the forms and textures of natural seed pods, pine cones, and leaves, the workshop explores seeds as symbols of hope, growth, renewal, and future planting. Participants can press natural textures into the clay and are encouraged to share stories about a plant or tree that is meaningful to them, reflecting on memories, journeys, and new beginnings. 

Design Studio, Learning Centre

Craft as Resistance: Curator-led Tour of Prints, Photographs and Posters

12:30-13:00 
Explore some photos from the V&A collection which explore themes of migration and courage in the prints and drawing study room with Curatorial Fellow in Photography, Sarah French. 
Meeting Point: Learning Centre Reception