From Climate to Voice Memos: Reflections of Yorkton Studios During Refugee Week

A Quick Note on Positionally

My name is Kiara, and this Refugee Week, I worked with Counterpoints Arts at the Yorkton Workshop. This was my first time experiencing the joy of Refugee Week; I feel so lucky to be a temporary part of the Counterpoints team. Although I was born in London, my family moved to Honolulu when I was young, and most of my formative memories involved feeling connected to the ‘āina, or land, around me. I would never call myself Hawai’ian, given that I do not come from indigenous blood, but I feel a spiritual and cultural connection to the place I have called my home for more than fifteen years. As a student of feminism, Indigenous, and colonial studies at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, I have spent much time reflecting and gaining perspective on my contribution to the colonial project as a non-indigenous person occupying Indigenous land. In this blog, I aim to reflect upon my experience attending some events of the week and explore a connection to home through different artistic and academic mediums.  

 

Learnings and Reflections

My first event of the week was a panel on climate change’s impact on migration hosted by Climate Outreach and Unbound Philanthropy. One of the main takeaways from these talks was clarifying the terminology individuals and organizations should use when addressing people displaced from their homes because of climate-related crises. Climate-related migration is highly contested in both climate activism and migration work. These two fields have been developing independently, and as climate change continues to impact millions and create uninhabitable land and unstable governments, there has been an effort to unify them. Working within the intersection of climate change and the global migration crises has some established challenges simply due to how each is run. During refugee week, this panel warned against the term climate migrant climate refugee. Although these terms don’t immediately seem problematic, they depersonalize the migrant narrative. 

 

The subsequent few events were arts-based and focused on different aspects, such as home and community building. These ranged from printmaking to cyanotypes and sewing. One stand-out conversation was with mural artist and workshop facilitator Tasnim Mahdy. Her workshop, which she led in partnership with John Hunnex, consisted of an in-depth discussion regarding the historical and cultural significance of the Codex. This led to questions regarding what has the privilege of being archived and whose stories get lost in them. Many indigenous and non-western rituals, artifacts, and practices do not involve written statements in the way that so much of the Western world values.

As a result, most of the findings in archives for universities or museums do not include stories of generational knowledge or traditions of life outside the Western canon. In this conversation, working with the Codex is slightly contradictory because of Anna Atkins. Atkins, thought to be the mother of cyanotypes, was the first woman to publish a book of entirely photographs. Despite her sizable contribution to art and photography, her husband was a slave owner, and it is thought that enslaved people picked many of the plants that appeared in her books. Working with and creating cyanotypes means acknowledging their creator and creating a new history of the art form. Refugee stories should be addressed in the archives, and using this method of creation forces participants to think critically about stories that we commonly hear about imperially centered world history. Doing this work is reminiscent of a term coined by Saydia Hartman: critical fabulation. This is the act of creating stories around the limited information we have about, in her context, people of color in the Americas. To look at history as a way of informing policy and action in the present, we must understand and create the stories of those yet to be represented in our books. Mahdy and Hunnex led these complicated discussions with empathy and a space that welcomed nuance and learning.

 

In artist, community mobilizer, and self-proclaimed un-learner Kin Chin’s workshop, “Threading Layers of Home,” she focused on the visceral reaction that home elicits. Beginning with a close reading of texts that she believes capture how home can be nurtured through the creation of art, she mindfully led us through the plethora of emotions that accompany a sense of

belonging. Full of tears, laughter, and thread, the workshop offered new perspectives on learning and unlearning textile creation. Working with my hands is something that I don’t often do anymore. I knew it wasn’t my calling when my paintings were always exhibited in the back of the art room, but working to unlearn that judgment and capturing a feeling was something that Chin encouraged. Participants used A4-sized pieces of canvas to mount fabric, yarn, newspaper clippings, and whatever else they desired. The original goal of these pieces was to sew on these additions using needles and embroidery thread. However, glue was also offered for those less artistic like myself. The act of sewing introduced a meditative, repetitive notion that brings comfort to the participant. Although I understand how this kind of textile work would be relaxing, those around me and I found it humorously frustrating and a great way to aid community building. The pure joy of making something from start to finish was embraced and became particularly meaningful with the attachment to home. 

 

One of the primary reasons I was looking forward to working with Counterpoints this Refugee Week was to get to know Leah and those at Compass Collective. The Voice Notes project, created by Compass Collective with Dr Sarah Jackson and Hardi Kurda and with commissioners including Counterpoints, overlaps stories of home and a feeling of belonging written and recorded by participants in their workshops. This project opens the door to personal stories about how the concept of home within the migrant community is rarely tied to a particular structural place but rather to groups of people and a feeling of embrace. Having this event wrap up my refugee week with Counterpoints was the perfect end to a week of community building and learning. The Counterpoints team and every guest who came through the Yorkton workshops contributed to building a family of emotional intimacy, open-mindedness, and care whose impact reaches throughout the UK and beyond every day of the year.