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REFUGEE ARTS IN WALES Refugees, exiles and other displaced people have contributed in important ways to the arts in Wales - arguably since the 9th century, when some of the earliest surviving Welsh poetry records the traumatic experience of exile in one's own conquered country. More recently, "incomers" have become extremely prominent in the arts scene, but refugees have not been so much noticed. In the middle of the twentieth century, hundreds of refugees from Europe found a home in Wales, some of them artists and writers like Josef Herman. In the 1970s, dozens of refugees from Chile, from communist Europe, and other parts of the world were warmly welcomed here. Up until the late 1990s there was a constant trickle of refugee incomers fleeing calamity - new arrivals from Somalia, for instance, heading for the long-established Somali community in Cardiff. But the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act meant radical changes in the nature and amount of refugee arrivals in Wales, changes to which we are only beginning to adapt. Several areas of urban Wales have been designated by the Home Office as "dispersal cluster areas", meaning that asylum seekers (refugees awaiting a decision on their legal status) are sent here to be housed in accommodation provided either by local councils, or by private companies. It seems that the Home Office envisages around 5,000 accommodation spaces in Wales - with the numbers of asylum seekers kept below 0.5% of the local district population. As cases are decided, people who "get status" (on average more than half of all cases) may choose to leave Wales, or to stay - some would say, the more who can be persuaded to stay, the better. So far, around 3,000 people sent to Wales under this system have come from 78 different countries in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe, the former USSR, South America and the Caribbean. In general, asylum seekers entering the UK are highly likely to be well educated professionals: 40% have a degree. Among them are high numbers of people with artistic skills and experience - in theatre, film-making, graphic design and visual arts, music, poetry, fiction and story-telling - as well as many other professions such as journalism, sciences, engineering and medicine. One scheme set up by
the charity "Displaced People in Action", sponsored by
the National Assembly, is providing fast-track training for dozens
of refugee doctors - soon to be extended to other medical staff
- to set them to work in the under-staffed NHS. Other asylum seekers
have to wait till they get status before they're allowed to earn
money working. But several projects have been set up to enable asylum
seekers with arts skills to work on a voluntary basis, and some
of these are now coming to fruition in a series of events, exhibitions
and publications. This column will keep Artcyrmu readers in touch
with these developments and introduce individual refugee artists. |
To
find out more: Items to follow: Delivering
the Goods (English Version) EVENTS
Please
feel free to contact Tom Cheesman |
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