Category: Activism

Migration Trail is an audio-visual project that uses maps and data visualisation in order to retrace the journeys of people travelling from Turkey and North Africa to Europe in search for a better life.  The journeys can be followed in real time and include the fictional characters’ thoughts, which can be sent as messages (written by Elnathan John and Nadia Asfour) to one’s phone, viewed on the website, or listened to on the project’s podcast.  Migration Trail started in 2014 in reaction to little attention the issue of migration to Europe had been getting in the media.  The real-time story-telling project was officially launched in 2017 as a way to address and convey the urgency and immediacy that the issue demanded, but lacked.

Atlas of Transitions – New Geographies for a Cross-Cultural Europe is one of the 15 large-scale projects of the 2017 Creative Europe programme (2017-2020). It promotes cross-cultural dialogue between European citizens and newcomers – migrants, refugees, asylum seekers – by bringing local communities closer together through culture and performing arts. The project looks at the potentialities arising from the contemporary migration phenomenon and seeks new ways of experiencing public space and cohabitation through art. Its aim is to counter radicalism and anxiety towards migration within society by developing strategies of co-creation and interaction between citizens and migrants, with the participation of people with diverse cultural backgrounds in traditional as well as non-conventional public spaces such as squares, neighbourhoods, and suburbs. To achieve this result, Atlas of Transitions promotes workshops, creative productions, festivals and academic research, thanks to the collaborations of cultural institutions and universities in seven European countries: Italy, Albania, Belgium, Poland, France, Greece, and Sweden. Together with national and local theatres and associations and artists from Europe and abroad, Atlas of Transitions supports academic research to promote strategies of emancipation and participatory knowledge and practice by involving universities and scholars from its seven partner countries. Researchers’ findings will be disseminated on our website in the Action Research section, where they can be downloaded without restrictions. To boost the practical knowledge that academic research will put together during this three-year project, in the last semester of Atlas of Transitions, a Summer School will host and provide training opportunities for scholars, social workers, and artists who perform in cross-cultural and migration-related contexts. Here, artists’ knowledge and experience will be shared and creative forms of active participation for social cohesion will be practiced together to teach and disseminate their potentialities in daily work and life.

Baynatna is the first public Arabic library in Berlin, opened on 18^th February 2017. “Baynatna” means “between us” in Arabic: this very popular phrase creates a special kind of intimacy between people who agree to share insights, thoughts or stories even if only just for second. In the process of establishing Baynatna, our international team relied on humor, trust, and sensibility to facilitate a space for dialogs no one knows where exactly they may lead us. An architecture class from Berlin’s Technical University designed and donated movable shelves and furniture that can be folded out to create a comfortable and warm space that remains open to everyone. The library continues to grow based on book donations and voluntary work. Baynatna provides as a safe space for a generation of readers who have lost not only their homelands, but also their books. Our book collection allows the readers to experience a taste of the home they have left and to become acquainted with worlds previously unknown to them. We use the power of stories to convey cross-cultural experiences and to foster an inclusive and progressive environment. On one hand, we provide literature to newcomers who, coming to Germany, are deprived of reading in their native language. On the other hand, we aim to have Arabic works translated into German and/or English so that people in Berlin can discover the long literary tradition that we have to offer. We spark discussions not only with the books on our shelves, but also through weekly live readings, music performances, and workshops. Baynatna is currently based at the Zentral- und Landesbibliothek of Berlin, Breite str. 30-36, 10178. Welcome!

Project initiator: Muhannad Qaiconie, Bard College Berlin

Our mission at Migration Matters is to empower the public to have more nuanced and evidence-based conversations about migration. We produce bite-sized video courses that complicate commonly held preconceptions with original ideas, research, and solutions-oriented perspectives from leading thinkers in the field: researchers, practitioners, as well as migrants and refugees themselves. We are awardees of grants from The London School of Economics and Advocate Europe, part of the groundbreaking Erasmus + Virtual Exchange consortium, and a 1st place winner of the 2017 Migration Media Award from the International Centre for Migration Policy Development. Migration Matters is a non-profit organization that was founded in January 2016 in response to media coverage of the so-called “refugee crisis” in summer 2015. You can see all our courses here.

FLAX is a network for cultural networking and collaboration, which promotes cultural exchange and cooperation for local and newly arrived cultural workers, artists and institutions inside Germany. We do not exclude any nation, color, legal status (as, for example, a refugee status) or religion. We are open and accessible to everybody. We are supporting and organizing interdisciplinary and intercultural artistic projects. We support artists in developing their individual artistic position or obtaining cultural education in Germany. A strong part of our program is a mentoring program established for newly arrived artists and cultural managers from all different parts of the world. We provide support and, if possible, access to university education, scholarships, residencies, information, proposals, and workshops. Our mission is to bring people from the cultural world in contact to each other. We would like to support you as individual arriving newly to Germany. We will try to accompany you through the complexity of the German Cultural Systems. We believe that a strong network is a chance to develop artistically as an individual and that mixing disciplines and backgrounds are a key to creativity and intercultural competency.