Toolbox
CONTAINED Project has developed a wide range of tools that connect experience, research and creative learning on migration. We are keen to perform them again in different settings or develop our toolbox further.
Contact us if you would like to book or know more about any of these activities.
Participatory theatre
This element focuses on the theme ‘Decisions and Journeys’. It looks at individual motivations for people from countries in conflict to stay or go, and the different aspects of their journey. This piece asks the question: what would you do?
We confront passers-by in public spaces with an attractive, colourful, welcoming installation, that sparks people’s attention. We offer them a hand massage or ask them a question: ‘are you a mover or a stayer?’, or ‘what is home to you?’. We invite people to engage in one of our participatory tools to start imagining what the decision to leave home would mean to them. Tools include fortune cookies, ‘packing’ a suitcase, creative writing, storytelling, and a migration fact-checking quiz.
Confronting an audience of passers-by means that we can reach a wide audience of both adults and children. Because we reach unsuspecting audiences, we keep the interaction light and personal, focusing on people’s own experiences. This installation is very flexible and can be done in any public space.
We performed a try-out version of this piece at the Pitt Rivers Museum event Migration: the Art of Movement, organised by the Oxford Migration Studies Society, followed by a street performance for the general public on Broad Street as part of the Oxfordshire Science Festival in June 2016, where we also hosted a public discussion on the themes explored within it. We also held a Creative Lab At the Story Museum in Oxford in September 2016.
Want to book this installation? E-mail to info@contained-project.com
Watch the trailers of the production and the street performances of ‘Decisions and Journeys’!
Creative Director Anja Meinhardt – Research Director Marieke van Houte – Performers Daniella Cromwell – Federica Infantino – Sparrow – Sarah Jane Clarke – Steve Hay – Dominic Heaney – Remco Heijmans – Marieke van Houte – Dan MacMahon – Anja Meinhardt – Frederike Otto – Sonja Wiencke – Storyteller Remco Heijmans – Poetry Sarah Jane Clarke – Film Ben Johnston – Set Simon Dormon – Music Quentin Lachapele – Audience outreach Joakim Daun – Brittany Roberts – Sarah Jane Clarke
Immersive theatre
The ‘Extraordinary Queuing Experience’ (EQE) is an immersive theatre performance that revolves around the theme of Arrival and Reception. It confronts an audience, that is queuing for an event or show, with an unexpected experience. Audiences are subject to arbitrary selection procedures and an increasingly absurd interplay between those in charge and those queuing. The performance works towards a climax, after which a brief explanation makes the link with migration. We develop this piece through a participatory rehearsal process with local actors of diverse migration backgrounds. The piece is built on their experiences and grounded in the local circumstances of where the piece is performed. This piece treads a line between immersive and invisible participatory theatre, improvised comedy, and a serious experience.
At the end, we briefly explain the audience that they have, in a playful way, experienced a hint of what migrants and refugees go through when trying to reach Europe. Next, they either access the thing they were queuing for, or we facilitate a participatory discussion on the meaning of their experiences. This piece can be linked to an existing event or can be an event in itself.
Want to book this piece? E-mail to info@contained-project.com
A pre-CONTAINED version of the piece was performed in May 2015 during LiveFriday: Social Animals, an event curated by the University of Oxford’s Social Sciences division to showcase its research, and held at the Ashmolean Museum. The piece was redeveloped and performed for the second time in October 2016 in the European quarter of Brussels during Nuit Blanche, themed around ‘Borders’. This performance was also performed during an event in Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford in December 2016. In June 2017, a new version of this piece was developed and performed for the Nacht van De Vluchteling in Amsterdam, in collaboration with BOOST Amsterdam.
We would like to adapt and multiply the concept of the Extraordinary Queuing Experience to many different settings, preferably working with local actors of refugee, migrant- and non-migrant backgrounds and their experiences. If you would like us to develop and perform the Extraordinary Queueing Experience in your community, neighbourhood or school, please get in touch!
Watch the trailers of the performances of The Extraordinary Queuing Experience!
Director Marieke van Houte – EQE Brussels: Performers Remco Heijmans – Anja Meinhardt – Marieke van Houte – Mbalou Arnould – François Makanga – Simon Rakovsky – Natalia Martinez – Romana Úlehlová – Production Assistant Brittany Roberts – EQE Oxford: Performers Judith Von Orelli – Peter Dewhurst – Fiona Watson – Anja Meinhardt – Steve Hay – Remco Heijmans – Brittany Roberts – Marieke van Houte – EQE Amsterdam: Performers Abdoujabar Alwardi – Karin Anzivino – Eva Broers – Katayoon Chalabi – Remco Heijmans – Els van Poppel – Khasayar Pourmanj – Ayman Qattan – Maria Rast – Sima Rezaie – Farah Shretah – Josje van der Sloot – Shah Tabibi – Hassan Taheri – Photography and Film Salar Ashari – Willem Hoogenboom – Masha Jahangard – Ibrahim Pero
Physical theatre
‘CONTAINED: Pecking Order’ is an on-stage physical theatre performance. Based on a script called ‘Pecking Order’ by Joakim Daun, this is a physical theatre performance that uses the migration of birds as a metaphor for human migration in relation to global change. The script revolves around four characters that each represent a different response to the changes related to increased arrival of birds in an unspecified town: a couple, of which one develops to be supportive of birds, and the other becomes scared of them, a Mayor having to respond to the needs of the people, and an ornithologist, who has to navigate between a love for birds and having to work with bird control policy for a living. The performance includes physical theatre, soundtrack / music, costume, choreography, animal study, imagery, and the transparent shipping container. The piece explores different perspectives on the question of what ‘we’ should do to deal with underlying issues that cause migration, and why.
The show is performed in a theatre setting, and followed by a post-show discussion.
This piece was first performed in August 2016 at the Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire. An adapted version based on research results was performed on 8 December 2016 during an event at Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford, and on 10-12 February 2017 at The Story Museum in Oxford. We aim to bring this performance to a wider audience in the UK and beyond.
Want to book this piece? E-mail to info@justiceinmotion.co.uk
Watch the trailers of the production and the performances!
Creative Director Anja Meinhardt – Research Director Marieke van Houte – Script Joakim Daun – Performers Wilderness Festival Daniella Cromwell – Remco Heijmans – Luke Chadwick-Jones – Anja Meinhardt – Performers end 2016/2017 Judith Von Orelli – Peter Dewhurst – Fiona Watson – Anja Meinhardt – Music Quentin Lachapele – Lights Ophélie Lebrasseur – Film Ben Johnston – Set Simon Dormon – Costumes Suzie Burlton – Production Assistant Natalie Hind / Brittany Roberts.
Talks & debates
CONTAINED explores innovative ways of discussing migration issues through connecting experience, emotion and knowledge on migration, rather than merely having a theoretical or cognitive discussion.
A debate called ‘Why do people migrate’ in the Town Hall at the Oxfordshire Science Festival, with a small group of people who were keen to discuss migration issues, just two days after the Brexit referendum, resulted in a very engaged discussion. We managed to build in an interaction with the street performance of CONTAINED #1 by having video-footage speed-edited around specific stages and patterns of migration, and related this ‘artistic’ representation to real stories of migration from Marieke’s own research and general statistics of migration. With each step, the question asked to the audience was, ‘what would you do?’.
Where possible, we would like to complement our creative activities with a talk, discussion or debate, in order to link the creative experience with real-life issues of migration. We use different discussion methods and address many different aspects of migration, based on stories from migrants around the world, as well as a solid factual, theoretical, historical and academic knowledge base.
Discussion leader/facilitator Marieke van Houte – Film Ben Johnston
Stories
Marieke has collected a large number of migration stories over a decade of interviewing migrants from around the world. Some of these stories are shortened and available here. These stories show the many decisions migrants need to make during their individual journeys, and the different levels of choice over those decisions to stay or go in the context of conflict.
All interviews were given with the informed consent of the interviewees and are anonymised to protect their privacy.
You can find links to the parts of the stories of migrants from Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Pakistan below. More stories will be added in the future.
The fool lives where he was born; the wise one where it's better for himself
Man, 52, Bosnia-Herzegovina
On the 10th of May 1992 at 9.40am there was an attack on the village. People started to panic and were getting nervous. All men were brought together. At 3pm, 70 of the men were sent into the forest. We walked for four hours until we reached a Muslim village. Then we walked for 11 hours to a city.
The rest stayed in the village. Everyone left in the village was sent to the camps. 262 people were in those camps. My wife and children were in the camp for a time. After that they were liberated and I sent them to Croatia.
After my wife and children had gone to Croatia, the war started in Croatia, so I didn’t know anything about them for 3 months. Then I was able to get radio contact with them and to find them.
I wanted to get to Croatia too. People told me I could only go on a school bus, as they wouldn’t check them. So I went on that bus and hid under the chairs. That’s how I crossed the border into Croatia. I found work with an NGO. Then a war started between Muslims and Croats. The police came and wanted to arrest us because they said our organization was sending weapons to Muslim fighters.
I discovered that my 2 brothers were in Germany. So we left with the entire family to Germany in 1994. I was there until 1998. In 1998 the German government announced that everyone should come back to Bosnia. We came back to the Muslim-Croat part of the country. I got a house. A woman would rent it to me but it was the house of a Serbian family that she had taken. I lived there for two years. I didn’t have a job. That’s when I started to make plans to go to the Netherlands.
I went to the Netherlands and claimed asylum. But the politics changed and I was rejected. The church providing shelter for homeless and undocumented migrants helped to find shelter. I lived there in that shelter for six months. Then I requested to come back to Bosnia.
Now I live here and I have no hope to get a job. I am 52 years old, nobody will hire me. I am not old enough to retire. One way or another I am waiting for something, but there is nothing to wait for.
I want to stay close to my family and friends
Man, early 20s, Pakistan
I ran a good phone shop which made me earn a good living. Then I was approached by a friend of my elder brother. He offered a job to install mobile software on phones. I understood it was going to be used for terrorist acts, so I refused. I was kidnapped for four days. I escaped. I came back and called my father, who told my brother. But my brother said, he has to do the job. Then my father decided I had to move out. I left for Greece, stayed two years there and then moved on to Austria.
I applied for asylum. I was waiting for three to four months after my first interview. But in the meantime, my father became sick and I decided I had to go back. I went straight to the hospital from the airport. My father was in a coma. After he got better, I first wanted to relaunch my shop, but that was not safe. I bought a van for transportation.
People threaten me again, but I never considered not returning because of the security threat. My father was sick. When we were small and we couldn’t walk, he made us walk. Now that he is in need, how can we just leave him? In that moment, taking care of my father was more important than my own security.
I had hope, I had energy, I had the power to do it. And I did it.
Man, mid-30s, Afghanistan
My childhood was not really good but it was better than other times. I was a child and my father was responsible for our family. There were some rockets landing in our neighbourhood. But I didn’t care about it. I was 17. I was just a kid, having fun with other kids.
But then the battle started between the different ethnic groups in Kabul. They were shooting each other and we were the fuel food between them. We were just being burnt between those people. When I remember those days the hairs of my body stands up.
In those days we left our home and our property, with only the clothes on our body. We went to the West of Kabul. We captured a piece of land and we built a makeshift house. It was a very cold winter and we only had one blanket that my cousin had given to us. All four brothers were under this one blanket.
After the war, the new government came and we had to leave the land because it wasn’t ours. We came to the city centre of Kabul, where us brothers tried to start some business. We were selling cigarettes in the streets, and step by step we could make some money to rent a house. Step by step life started to become better. With the money we made we started a shop. We were making good money and all the brothers would come to work in the morning, and go back home in the evening.
But right after that the Taliban came and everything started to turn for the worse again. The Taliban had a problem with our shop and I had to go into hiding. That’s when I decided I had to leave. We sold the shop we owned for 8,500 dollars. My cousin arranged a travel agent to take me to Europe for 8,000 dollars. The smuggler prepared the way for me. He helped me escape to Pakistan and from there to Holland.
There were people who came with me through Pakistan. They had relatives in the Netherlands, who could tell them what to do. I was just by myself, a poor guy walking. And I had nobody helping me, telling me what to say or not to say in the asylum application. Eventually, they were accepted and I was rejected.
When I came back, my brothers and my father thought I couldn’t do anything, because I spent 5 years in the Netherlands for nothing. But I had the hope that I could do something. Because I had energy, I had that power to do it. And I did it. For the third time in my life, I have started my business from the beginning. And I’m growing. I showed to my brother, and I proved to my father that I have the energy of a businessman.
I hope this was the last time. I hope life will not collapse on me again. But life is not guaranteed in Afghanistan. When I was in Holland they told me ‘go back to your country, your country is safe’. I came here and I made something out of my hard work. But you can’t predict the future. If there is any problem, if the regime changes, I may have to decide to go somewhere.
My parents tell me to come back, but I don't want to, because I first want to earn the money back they spent on my journey.
Man, 17, Pakistan
When I left Pakistan I was 11 years old. My father is a heart patient and my uncles did not want to help us. We were in a poor condition and I decided to go abroad. I went to Karachi. There I paid 5,000 rupees to a smuggler and the journey started.
We went to Iran. I was caught by the Iranian police, but I could not go home, because I had burnt all my boats there. So I went again to Karachi, to try again with the agent. We went again, the same route, by road, running, escaping, until we reached Turkey. They called my father that I was there, which meant that he had to pay.
I got to Istanbul, where I was caught and again released. I crossed the water and reached Greece. The army caught me, put me in a camp, gave me a document for a temporary stay and let me out. But I lost the document and I was caught and put in jail again.
When I got out of jail, the smugglers were waiting for us. They demanded 800,000 rupees. I couldn’t find work. There were too many people and no jobs. My family sent me money to survive. My father’s debt was increasing. Then I decided to go back.
I spent the money I received as return assistance on a buffalo. But we had to marry my sister, so we sold the buffalo to pay the dowry. I am now doing paint work on a daily basis, for 300 rupees a day. We still have to repay the loan we took to travel to Greece. The people who lent us the loan tried to fight with us. They are right of course.
If everyone moves abroad, who would run this country?
Man, mid-30s, Afghanistan
I left my hometown when I was five. We couldn’t stay because the Russians were there. So we went to Kabul. In 1992 the civil war started. Soon, every street in Kabul was controlled by another group. I was around 15-16 years old then. Every day rockets landed on Kabul and we would just go to school. I happened to be kind of good at school, so I liked going there. When there had been an attack, we would go see, and there would just be a little dust. Sometimes a classmate wouldn’t show up, a day, two days, three days, and then you would hear that there was a rocket attack and they were killed. It was the most normal thing in the world but if I think about it now, it’s really not normal.
During that war my father and my brother were murdered. My father had worked for the previous government. We were not the only ones. In our neighbourhood, where the elite lived, people were just being killed on the street. It was the civil war, so everyone kills one another without a reason. You can recover from anything that happens to you, but the loss of our relatives is the worst thing we’ve been through.
We couldn’t live in that neighbourhood anymore. So me, my mother and my brother went to a different neighbourhood in Kabul, until that place became dangerous too. From there we fled to Pakistan. We stayed for a while, but we had no money, nothing at all anymore.
My brother lived and studied in Moscow at the time. He invited us to Moscow. From there we paid a human smuggler to bring us to the Netherlands.
We were dropped off near the German border and we were told to go to a town in the West of the country. I spoke a bit of English so I tried to find our way to the address of the refugee camp. When we got to the camp we saw many more Afghans, but also people from Yugoslavia and Congo. We had to learn to live with people we’d never seen before, let alone lived with. But we were happy not to hear the bombs anymore. After 18 months in the camp, we heard that we could stay. Slowly, we got things sorted quite neatly.
I came back to work in Kabul in 2005 and 2010. Everyone is busy with normal life. Sometimes a bomb explodes. I’ve experienced a number of attacks from very close, but I wasn’t in it, so then you keep coming back.
At this moment you can have a first movers’ advantage if you do business in Afghanistan. I hope many more young Afghans dare to come to Afghanistan. Eventually they are the ones that are going to have to do it together with the local Afghans.
I am very grateful to the Netherlands for what I have achieved. But I always think, someone is born in a certain area, and that’s not for nothing. If everyone moves to Europe, who should live here in Afghanistan?
I don't want my kids to be treated as foreigners
Man, mid-30s, Afghanistan
When I was in second grade of school, my father had a car dealership and he went to Germany, to import trucks into Afghanistan. He went back and forth between Germany and Afghanistan.
When I was at 10th grade of school, the regime changed in Afghanistan and the war started and the situation became very bad. Because my dad’s company was strongly established in Germany, I had the chance to go to Germany on a business visa.
I wanted to stay there until the security situation would get better. I would have liked to immigrate to Germany, if I had found a way to be there the whole time. But the thing is that when you are in Germany, they don’t care about your humanity. Even if you’re being nice, they don’t care about that, they only care about your face and about your hair.
If you’re German they respect you, but if you are non-German they don’t respect you, they don’t care about you. They make you understand that there is a big difference between you and the Germans. Not just in one place, but everywhere you go. Even if you stay in Germany for 100 years and they find out you‘re not German they don’t care about you. I got really tired of living in Germany and I was thinking like maybe one day I should go back to my country.
And in 2002 I received a letter from the German government, which said that the situation is good in Afghanistan now, there are no threats towards you. Even our soldiers are in Afghanistan, if there is no threat to our soldiers, then there is no threat to you either. So please go back to your country.
I had a German girlfriend who was with me for 7 years. She was always telling me that these people who were treating me badly, they just have mental problems. She said that if those people would go abroad, they would realize that they made a mistake treating non-German people different from Germans.
I asked her if she wanted to marry me and come and live in Afghanistan with me. But she could not do that. And then she asked me if I would marry her and stay in Germany with her. She said once we are married, the German government cannot force you to leave. But I said I could not do that.
I was not only thinking about myself. I was also thinking about the future of my kids. If I married that German girl, my kids would be in Germany and I was thinking that they would be facing the same behaviour and treatment as me and I wouldn’t tolerate that. That’s why I decided to have kids in Afghanistan, who grow up in this country and live their life in here.
And then in 2002 I returned to my country and in 2004 I got married, and from 2010 until now I work for an international development agency and it’s still going on.
I never thought I would leave home. Nobody would want to leave if we didn't have to.
Woman, 60s, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Everybody had to sign papers that we left voluntarily and then we went in the bus to the border. People were throwing stones at us. We had to get on the train quickly. We slept on the floor of the train, and in a camp, near a dirty toilet. There were 3000 people there.
We arrived in a refugee camp in Hungary. 26 people slept in the same room, in bunk beds. When we got there, everyone slept for two days. We stayed in Hungary for 13 months. We were guarded by army people. There were fences around us.
Meanwhile, my daughter was in a camp in Austria. She was having a baby and she missed her mom. A man offered that his wife could take care of the baby and that she could work as a cleaning lady for them, to save money to pay a smuggler to bring us over.
When she had enough money, I escaped from the camp. I got to sit in a car that would take me to the border. I had to walk across the border myself. First through the sunflower field and then through the forest and then to the road. It was all in the middle of the night.
When I got to the other end, I didn’t dare to step too far off the road, so the smuggler couldn’t find us. When he finally found us, my legs were cut open from the journey through the hills and through the forest and the sunflowerfield. Everything was covered in blood.
I went to live with a woman in her apartment. They had threatened her that she couldn’t take refugees anymore, but she still did it. I applied for a refugee status. They asked me why I had left. I said that I would have been killed otherwise.
They showed us how to use a hoover. They thought we came out of the jungle. It didn’t matter if you were engineer or a doctor, everyone had to work as a cleaner.
We lived in Austria until 1999. They wouldn’t let old or ill people stay. Both my son and me are ill, so someone would have had to pay to take care of us, and no one could do that.
We were sent back to Bosnia but we couldn’t go home. It wasn’t safe and everything was broken. We lived in refugee centres in Bosnia for 3.5 years. In 2004 we went back home. My daughters paid for the renovations and they bring things with them when they visit from Austria.
I have a pension and my daughter sometimes sends me some money. It’s just about enough to get by with my son. He used to work before the war but he isn’t now. He has many traumas and fear because of the war.
I’m not scared of anyone. If they are shouting on the street, I just ignore it. I’m not letting myself be yelled at by these young people. I am home. I could live here my whole life, but that won’t be much longer. In Austria they asked me why I left Bosnia, but no one would have wanted to go if we didn’t have to.
Researcher/interviewer Marieke van Houte – Stories Migrants from Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Pakistan
Information & facts
Hard facts about migration can sometime be an eye-opener. Can you estimate the right numbers with the facts? Do the migration statistics-checking quiz!
Disclaimer: Statistics about migration can also be tricky, because people on the move are difficult to measure, and different sources portray them in different ways, depending on what the messenger wants to say with them. To know if a statistic is reliable, you have to find the source. We tried to find the most widely recognized sources. Click on the answer to get to the source. Have you found a very different figure? Let us know!
Fact 1: How many % of all people in the world are migrants?
3.3 %, or 244 million people of the world’s population, lived outside their country of birth in 2015. Over the past 50 years, this percentage has remained quite stable (fluctuating between 2.7 % and 3.3 %).
97 % of the world’s population does not migrate. Many people are strongly attached to a sense of home and belonging and a sense of continuity, even when the living conditions are difficult. Home is not always comfortable and peaceful. Long-term conflict or violence can become a way of life in which people develop daily survival strategies. On the other hand, not everyone who wants to migrate is able to do so. It takes money, networks and courage to take a risky journey.
Fact 2: How many % of all people in the world are refugees?
0.3 %, or 21.3 million people of all people in the world were refugees in 2015. This is 8.7 % out of all 244 million migrants. Most other migrants travel for work or family reasons.
A migrant is a person who is living outside of their country of birth for a longer period of time, regardless of the length of stay and cause for migration.
An asylum seeker is a migrant who seeks safety in a country other than their own, and waits for a decision on the application for refugee status.
A refugee is a migrant who has been given refugee status after seeking asylum. Based on the refugee convention of the United Nations, a person with a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion should be protected when they are looking for safety outside of their country.
Fact 3: How many people (in millions) in the world are refugees?
21.3 million people in the world are refugees. 54 % of them come from three countries: There are currently 4.9 million Syrian refugees; 2.7 million Afghan refugees; and 1.1 million Somali refugees.
Fact 4: How many people (in millions) in the world are displaced from their homes?
65.3 million people in the world are displaced from their homes. This includes refugees, who seek protection in another country, but also people who are internally displaced within their country.
Fact 5: How many % of all people in the EU are migrants?
10 %, or 52.8 million people of all 508 million people in EU countries were born outside that country in 2015.
65 % (or 34.3 million persons) of these migrants were born outside the EU.
35 % (or 18.5 million people) of these migrants were born in a different EU Member State.
Fact 6: How many % of all people in the EU are refugees?
0.3 %, or 1.6 million people of all 508 people in Europe were refugees in 2015. This is 10 % of all refugees in the world.
Historically, 80–90 % of all refugees move to a safer place within a country or in neighbouring countries. People who travel further afield often have the networks and resources to organize this risky journey. Increased and protracted civil conflicts in combination with decreasing international support to facilitate protection in the region has led from the 1990s to a gradual increase of onward migration to Western European countries. Still the total amount of refugees in Europe is a fraction of all refugees in the world. 84 % of all refugees are in Asia or Africa.
Fact 7: How many % of all people in the UK are migrants?
8.4 %, or 5.4 million of all 64.6 million people in the UK were born outside the country in 2015.
Fact 8: How many % of all people in the UK are refugees?
0.18 %, or 117,234 people of all 64.6 million people in the UK are refugees. This is about the same as the average percentage world-wide.
Fact 9: How many % of all people in Lebanon are Syrian refugees?
20 %, or 1.2 million people of all 6 million people in Lebanon are Syrian refugees.
Syrians are the largest group of refugees in the world at the moment. About 4.9 million Syrians are now refugees, of a population of 23 million people. 6.5 million are displaced from their homes within Syria. 90 % of the 4 million Syrians (in September 2015) displaced outside their country’s borders, were located in just three countries—Turkey (1.8 million), Lebanon (1.2 million) and Jordan (630,000).
Statistics on refugees from a single country like Syria change fast. More up-to-date numbers may be available.
Fact 10: How many % of all people in the UK are Syrian refugees?
0.0077 %, or 5,000 people of all 64.6 million people in the UK are Syrian refugees.
The country hosting the most Syrian refugees in Europe is Germany, with 66,000 refugees in mid-2015.
Books
Storyteller Remco and researcher Marieke have made a trilogy of children’s storybooks about migration. They revolve around two best friends, Mouse and Hare.
In I am Leaving, Mouse is leaving the forest to go live in the Fields. The story is about saying goodbye to loved ones, reasons to stay and reasons to go.
In A Letter From Mouse, Hare receives a letter with news from the Fields, which sparks the imagination of all the animals of the forest. The story is about different motivations one can have to go on a journey.
In Let’s go! Hare and the other animals from the forest take the journey to the fields. The story is about the different capacities one needs to overcome the obstacles of a journey.
These stories for primary school children reflect in a fictional story the different motivations for and patterns of migration. We envision a series covering different aspects and stages of migration, accompanied with educational material for parents and teachers. We are currently looking a publisher for these books, in English and Dutch!
Authors Marieke van Houte – Remco Heijmans
Illustrator Remco Heijmans
Different interactive workshops can let a wide range of participants of all ages experience, feel and imagine what it is like to be a migrant.
Storytelling workshop
In a sequence of activities based around real and imagined stories on the theme of ‘home and journeys’, participants of all ages take an imaginative journey that helps to reflect on the different aspects of migration.
Workshop Leaders: Remco Heijmans – Marieke van Houte
Improvisation and participatory theatre workshop
‘Improvisation is a no-budget journey’. Using different games, exercises and techniques from improv and participatory theatre, followed by reflection, participants experience the emotions, decisions, and dilemmas of migration.
Workshop Leaders: Marieke van Houte – Remco Heijmans
Movement and dance workshop
Workshops that explores the physicality of migration through movement, dance and physical theatre exercises.
Workshop Leader: Anja Meinhardt
Different audio-visual material is available. In the near future we have some concrete ideas to develop this tool in a further direction.
The opportunities to connect research, experience and creative learning on migration are endless, but we have some ideas. Will you work with us to create one of the following things?