For Refugee Week’s 25th anniversary we invite you to celebrate what compassion looks like in action. Together we can create a shared understanding of compassion to ensure we are extending it widely to all.

“Our task must be to free ourselves – by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”- Albert Einstein

Why compassion?
The last few years have been challenging for all of us. We are still adjusting to new realities post-lockdown as well as responding to new crises. In the UK, dangerous anti-migration government rhetoric continues, along with inhumane conditions for asylum seekers.

But, none of these things happen in isolation. We know how interconnected our world is: how something seemingly “far away” impacts everyone. All of this makes us even more aware of the need to widen our circles of compassion.

Within our own experiences are all the tools we need to be compassionate, not just to ourselves and those in our immediate circle but to all our human neighbours and our one shared home, planet earth.

Call to action!
We invite you to take part in Refugee Week 2023 and show us how arts and culture can help widen our circles of compassion. We cannot wait to see all of your creative responses!

Refugee Week 2023 is 19–25 June, join us!

#RefugeeWeek
#CompassionIntoAction
#SimpleActs

Everyone is welcome to use this year’s poster, you can access it via our free social media pack. You can also order free posters and postcars via our shop.

You can read more about this year’s brilliant Compassion by Murugiah on our blog!

Footnote on the process of deciding theme: Since September 2022, we have been in consultation with our amazing network of partners about the theme (this network includes the brilliant Refugee Week co-chairs, the operations group, the producer network, our advisory members, international organisers and steering group). We did this process through conversations, meetings and through digital interactive exchange. We mapped and archived our messy process on this padlet here– feel free to explore! We look forward to developing this process further in future years and embedding learnings for next year.

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