Amid the hysterical tide of opposition to refugees and asylum seekers, artists and arts organisations have waded in to build new creative partnerships, encouraging refugee artists to develop their skills and find new platforms, enabling them to express not only their rich and diverse cultures, but their anger and frustration, and become their own best advocates for their place in a just and humane society. This debate has yet to run its course, but there are signals that arts and culture are gaining validity. One such indicator is that Strathclyde Police now organizes an international festival each June in Sighthill, North Glasgow, as part of its strategy to combat racism and intolerance of some 6,000 refugees and asylum seekers in the city. The police have recorded a "noticeable reduction in the number of racist incidents and a marked improvement in community relations."

Last summer Creative Exchange hosted 'A Sense of Belonging', a one-day conference exploring arts and culture in community integration, dialogue, participation and empowerment. Its inspiration was the Refugee Council's response to the UK Immigration White Paper, 2002, which said: "The Government's aim is to strengthen active participation in the democratic process and a sense of belonging to a wider community. We believe that the key to achieving this lies not in how people are taught, but in how they are treated. People will only feel that they are able to participate meaningfully in society if they are welcomed and valued."

'A Sense of Belonging' drew together practitioners and policy makers from the arts and social sectors, refugees and refugee organisations, to explore best practice. A fifth of participants were refugees or from refugee organisations, and a further fifth from the social and local authority sector. Creative Exchange has been exploring these issues since its research on the Kosovo crisis in 1999 highlighted the patchy, sometimes insensitive provision by local authorities for refugees fleeing the Balkans - a trip to the zoo was about the level of it. Things have changed, with excellent recent work by authorities such as the London Borough of Southwark which has promoted refugees' participation in the arts as an opportunity for education, lifelong learning and social inclusion.

But why is arts and culture beginning to be seen as a valid approach? Wondimu Yohannes, Director of Development and Integration, Refugee Action, explained: "Legal and material needs cannot create a sense of belonging. People need to feel more than that. You can put indicators on housing, on health, but not on being holistically part of a community. There is 'feel factor' involved in integration. Culture and arts could contribute a lot around public education, awareness raising, storytelling. …arts and culture could also contribute to trauma recovery, and through challenging assumptions about refugees and asylum seekers and negative stereotypes, particularly the idea that refugees were liabilities."

Keynote speaker David Archer, Head of International Education for Action Aid, which recently started working with refugees using theatre, explained: "The focus needs to be on strengthening the capacity of refugees to communicate for themselves, on their own terms; to challenge, and have greater access to the media; to build identity and strengthen their sense of culture, and to use the arts to bring their voices to wider British society. This is an increasingly important area of work for all of us."

While this presents a great opportunity for the arts, it is important to ensure that the work is appropriate and sensitive, and does not become an opportunistic free-for-all which forgets the needs of the refugees and asylum seekers themselves. The logic behind our conference was that by bringing together practitioners and agencies with experience of working in this field, we could draw together strands of best practice into a coherent family of approaches. A huge range of issues are documented in our conference report (available online). Some were generic to community arts - the need for sensitivity and empathy; that approaches should be based on facilitation, listening, patience, gender and cultural sensitivity; the need to involve refugees and asylum seekers in planning and management. Work should be based on research and dialogue, encourage transfer of responsibilities and skills acquisition, and preferably have some form of sustainability.

But some of the risks identified were grave, including that the arts could be used as a 'pacifying' mechanism which pays lip service to change and a fostering of 'understanding and good will', but which would fail unless it could influence the legal or political system.

It is difficult to imagine how that is possible in the current political climate, but we can at least provide outlets for refugees and asylum seekers to develop their creative skills, express themselves, and promote positive images of themselves. If the evidence of Strathclyde is a barometer, it does have an impact.



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