Art Refuge Canopy and Art Refuge use art and art therapy to support the mental health and well-being of people displaced due to conflict, persecution, poverty and climate emergency, in the UK and internationally.
Art Refuge Canopy will be continuing the project work in Paris with our partners Médecins du Monde, le CEDRE (Secours Catholique) and Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers.
This year we will be delivering our research-based model “The Community Table”:
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Fortnightly at the open access drop in of Cafe Papote at the CEDRE day centre (Thursday afternoons 2pm-5pm),
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Monthly at the medico-social permanence of Médecins du Monde (Tuesday afternoons 2pm-5pm)
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Monthly at le jardin la Semeuse at Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers (Wednesday afternoons 3pm-6pm).
The Art Refuge Canopy Team : Kate France, Naomi Press and Pascale Marie
Email: contact@artrefugecanopy.org
HISTORY & CONTEXT.
2019-PRESENT
Our work in Paris began in 2019 at the invitation of our partner organisation the Secours Catholique-Caritas France to work with their busy day centre on the outskirts of Paris. The CEDRE provides support and a space for refugees and asylum seekers existing in precarity and without fixed addresses.
Since January 2021 two members of our team based in France, Naomi Press and Kate France, have offered The Community Table on a fortnightly basis at the CEDRE. As the years go by, and the relationship with the CEDRE grows and deepens, the activity has expanded.
In 2022, we began taking The Community Table out into the nearby cultural centre, Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, to open up dialogues within the local community. In these monthly sessions, which take place in the urban garden attached to the Laboratoires, La Semeuse, people from the CEDRE and other organisations are invited to participate alongside local residents in psychosocial activities that span art making, gardening and breadmaking.
In 2025 our partners Médecins du Monde invited us to deliver The Community Table in their psychological support clinic on a monthly basis. We work alongside a multidisciplinary team of psychiatrists, psychologists, doctors, lawyers and volunteers in a specialist service supporting refugees and asylum seekers.
Trainees from the Paris art therapy school INECAT are regularly received on yearly placements. After a long introductory period, the trainees hold The Community Table on alternate weeks at the CEDRE, with a supervision programme provided by the team.
Visiting artists and practitioners are regularly invited to The Community Table in its different settings, including artist Mehdi Yarmohammadi, ethnobotanist Véronique Desanlis, photographer Sandrine Lissac, writer Josie Carter, filmmaker Tony Gammidge and writer and artist Raphael Bouboutou.
Experiential psychosocial trainings have been delivered to the teams with which we work including paid staff and volunteers. Over the last two years we have developed and delivered a series of inter-organisational training workshops in collaboration with the project Art Exist.