SHARING SOME THOUGHTS WITH THE TURN OF THE YEAR

As 2025 draws to a close, we reflect on the role of art in helping to create spaces for collective imagination, hope and belonging, made possible once again by your ongoing encouragement and support.

During what has been another troubled year, with a world shaped by fracture & uncertainty, our artists & art therapists have continued to travel to where people displaced are located - in northern France & southern England - to deliver arts-based mental health & wellbeing support. We have witnessed how our research-based model The Community Table acts as a welcoming space that encourages reflection, imagination, curiosity, care, humour, hope & meaning making for everyone present.

Beyond The Community Table, we have been moved by the quiet but vital ways in which connections between people seeking asylum & people in local communities can be forged through creative activity together, fostering mutual learning & respect. As such, we have bridged into local drop-in, festival & cultural spaces as a core element of our delivery wherever we can.

With no physical charity base, we keep overheads to an absolute minimum, with the vast majority of our income spent on direct delivery costs. We have continued to make great efforts to choose use our resources with care, buying pre-used materials & reusing them over time as a core principle of our practice, reflecting our acute awareness of the planet’s dwindling resources & our commitment to preserving them.

Next year in May we will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of Art Refuge with exhibitions, symposia and skills-sharing events, and will keep you updated as further details emerge.

We will explore & celebrate ways in which art can bring people together in extraordinary ways, and contribute to peace and belonging within communities.

As we say goodbye to 2025, please join us alongside hundreds of other organisations and thousands of individuals in local communities across the UK, and around the world, as we collectively work towards these aims in 2026!

With warmest thanks from all at Art Refuge for making our work possible.