ACC1Love – Working with Asylum Seekers

I was asked to design a summer project of the African Community Centre, working with a group of male asylum seekers and refugees.  The aim of the project was to teach them digital photography skills.  After lots of discussion, the group decided on a theme for the project.  We had talked about how asylum seekers and refugees were depicted in the media, and how many people in UK view them.  The group decided that their project would aim to challenge stereotypes about asylum seekers, and to raise awareness of the positive aspects that they can bring with them.  They talked about the culture, food, religion, language, interests etc that they bring from their countries.  They called their project: ACC1Love.

We wanted to incorporate the difficult journeys in the project too and mapped them on a large scale map, together with the different forms of transport that they had used.

As part of the project, the men had portraits taken and took them of each other.  We also did some digital storytelling about themselves.

These portraits and excerpts from the storytelling will be exhibited during Refugee Week.

ACC1Love – Asylum Seekers and Refugee Project