“ECHOES OF HOME” IN ESSEX

This Winter, we began a 2 year multi-artform collaboration, led by @atelier.armonico

Echoes of Home * supports men housed in Wethersfield Asylum Centre, weaving together music, dance & visual artmaking. Fortnightly sessions are held in Braintree by professional dancers, musicians & our Essex team of artists/art therapists.

At a time when men face daily racist abuse in the towns surrounding Wethersfield camp, it feels ever more important to provide a safe, accessible space for the men to enjoy an atmosphere of absorption, escape & play.

In the sessions, 2 dance practitioners offer dynamic, culturally rich dance styles particularly likely to resonate with young men, such as Capoeira & Breakdance. The group come together in learning these movements before playing music from their countries, often in turn leading to impromptu moments of dance & joyful expressions of cultural identity.

The Art Refuge team offers a visual art element. Recent sessions have involved analogue slide projectors used to transform the space, casting light into the mid-winter darkness. Playfully overlaid images of mountains, sprawling cities, strange plants & the ocean have filled the wall in front of the dancers, adding an immersive quality to the sessions. In one session, men traced around eachother’s silhouettes onto a large canvas, then painted with bold colours, filling the containing spaces they had created.

Recently, a local volunteer who runs a music group in the camp sat beside a singer from Sudan. As the young man sang a phrase, the volunteer responded with an improvisation on the guitar, repeating this process for some time, connecting beyond language. This poignant instance of attunement ripples out across the project; within the music, dance & art making.

We reflect on how these sessions are rich in creative potential and how it is an unusual privilege to have several creative practicioners & many men with musical, dance & visual art expertise co-creating to make something together. These sessions could be thought of as a ‘creative lab’, a space to experiment & embark on an imaginative inquiry.

*National Lottery Reaching Communities Fund