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ART REFUGE
Supporting displaced people through art and art therapy
since 2006
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Art Refuge uses art and art therapy to support the mental health and well-being of people displaced due to conflict, persecution and poverty, both in the UK and internationally.
Established as a charity in 2006, we have operated as Art Refuge UK until 2019. We have changed our name to Art Refuge to reflect our widening remit and reach.
Our ongoing programmes take place in the UK and northern France while we are involved in shorter term interventions in other settings. We also deliver tailor-made arts-based training and skills-sharing workshops in the UK, Europe and internationally and welcome requests.
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Visual artists and art therapists
Our team of artists and art therapists is equipped to deliver dynamic, culturally relevant and responsive programmes in a wide range of contexts across the UK and internationally, with a longstanding history in South Asia. We are currently growing our team of refugee artists in all our programmes. We are skilled at adapting our work to support safe and imaginative spaces for people who have been displaced, including refugees and asylum seekers, both while they are in transit and once they have reached a final destination.
Participatory and collaborative practice
Art Refuge's core ethos is based upon a participatory and collaborative practice informed by decades of individual and collective experience and skills in the visual arts, art therapy, trauma work and psychosocial approaches. Always working in close partnership with local and international government and non-governmental organisations, our work largely takes place within groups and we currently operate in London, Bristol and in northern France.
Events & exhibitions
We engage in public discourse through our active use of social media as an advocacy platform as well as a place to celebrate people's creative agency; fundraising events; exhibitions; peer-reviewed and other academic writing, presentation of papers at conferences and delivery of arts-based psychosocial training programmes in the UK and internationally.
