Come and join us for this celebration of refugees’ craft skills, personal and cultural identities, and stories of positive change, shaped through fashion and the visual arts. We invite you to take part in the following:

The ‘Decolonising Fashion and Textiles’ team from Centre for Sustainable Fashion, UAL is a participatory action research project led by design researcher Francesco Mazzarella, with visual artist Lucy Orta that foregrounds the lived experiences of London-based refugees and asylum seekers in relation to the themes of cultural sustainability and community resilience.

In connection with the theme of ‘Our Home’ we invite you to take part in the following:

Performance times: 14:30-15:00 and 17:00-17:30 – The Raphael Gallery
An interactive performance featuring refugee participants modelling culturally meaningful clothes they created during the project while finding their new ‘home’ in London.
The fashion collection is the culmination of a series of eight workshops, which started with a guided tour of the V&A Fashion Collection to inspire the participants with a vast collection of historical garments, jewellery, and accessories from all over the world, while fostering debates around decolonising fashion and cultural sustainability. Nineteen participants drew on their personal identity, stories of migration, cultural heritage, and visions for the future to design and make bespoke fashion items.

15:00-17:00 – The Globe, Europe Galleries
For this drop-in come and explore a series of textile objects, hear about Lucy Orta’s research and share your own perspectives.
Audiences are invited to interact with Lifeline, a series of soft textile objects made from calico fabric. 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 life in the new place of resettlement.