A summer of hope: UK’s third sector challenge anti-immigrant narratives
Six organisations in Kent ran community projects in summer 2024, from commissioning artistic work to offering language, mental health, and skills development.
Aram Rawf is a community inclusion officer at Samphire, a Dover-based charity supporting asylum seekers waiting for the UK Home Office to process them. It’s a wait he knows well; he arrived as a seventeen-year-old in the UK from the Middle East in 1999. “I spent 10 years not knowing if I was going to be sent back or allowed to establish life here,” he recalled. Back then there were few local, third-sector organisations that he could reach out to. But things have changed.
Samphire was one of the organisations that took part in the New Narratives project funded by INCLUDE+ (a five-year programme funded by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) and led by Digital Identities.
Six organisations received mentoring and support to develop digital or hybrid initiatives that engage, inform and empower residents as well as newly arrived migrants. Despite the terror and disruption of the anti-immigrant riots, participants developed and successfully ran community engagement projects between May and September 2024. Initiatives included commissioning original artistic work, setting up language and digital skills exchange forums, creating a writing course, offering mental health support and opening up new community spaces.
Folkestone, perched on the southeastern coast of the UK overlooking the English Channel, was chosen as the host city for this project. Local organisations in the region are asylum seekers’ first point of contact and face the enormous task of assisting them. There were 125,474 asylum seekers who arrived on small boats from France between January 2018 and June 2024, according to the UK’s Home Office.
“Historically Folkestone has been on the front lines, shaped by both local events and European shifts,” explained Diane Dever, member of the New Narratives team. The geographer-turned-artist has lived for over 20 years in this town.
Political rhetoric has increasingly targeted immigration, but Rawf recalled a time when refugees’ contributions to the economy and society were recognised. “Unfortunately, we (the political system and politicians) are doing more (and competing) to stop humanitarianism. And that is heartbreaking to see,” he said.
In 2024, even as Rawf participated in the Lab, the UK’s anti-immigrant sentiments worsened. Against this shifting socio-political landscape, New Narratives aimed to counter negative stereotypes by helping organisations based in Canterbury, Dover, Folkestone, Margate and London. The goal was to create participatory projects and devise effective strategies to build bridges across divided and polarised communities. The multidisciplinary and cross-sector New Narratives team came from the UK, Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland.
Principles and Processes
New Narratives kicked-off with the Storytelling Lab, an interactive workshop format to develop participatory projects. Over an intense couple of days participants were encouraged to strip down their good intentions and really focus on the needs of the community they wanted to serve.
Dorothée King, one of the facilitators, explained, “We have all the good intentions, but sometimes our projects need this reality check.” Participants with clarity in their mission are less likely to burn out or embark on bloated projects.
The Lab also addressed a major gap: third-sector organisations often work in isolation and many participants of the New Narratives project said that working together was a welcome change. In a diffused field that is hard to map, such networks are essential to meet shared goals. Studies of similar networks, such as the Accommodate refugee-housing programme, have shown that local organisations with shared goals provide culturally relevant support and bridge gaps between refugees and larger systems. By fostering networks, New Narratives enabled participants to sharpen their offerings and achievable goals.
King highlighted the pitfalls of over-engineered partnerships, where funders impose restrictive terms. New Narratives offered a stipend and no-strings-attached grants, freeing participants to focus on processes and systems rather than deliverables.
Audience-Centric Projects
People United ran a project called Holding On, a climbable public art installation, co-designed by people with refugee backgrounds. Navigating immigration systems can make young people feel powerless, the project aimed to create a space where the producers have agency, they are the ones who make the decisions, artist Chloe Osborne explained.
She explained their focus on radical care in a system that focuses on productivity. Radical care aims to bring equitable, tangible and sustained improvements to collective well-being.
After the Lab, Jo McLean said they have a better understanding of their target demographic, and how to design more inclusive future events, and are also applying for funding to further develop their project.
Rawf too embarked on a new project focusing on an unmet need of asylum seekers: mental health. He called it a well-being project as asylum seekers often come from cultures where talking about mental health is taboo.
He said, “asylum seekers suffer trauma in their homeland, during their journey, and on arrival.” Using inspirational Instagram posts, music, and activities like gardening and nature walks in Margate, he sought to connect asylum seekers with locals and encourage self-care. Within months, his initiative has gained over 1,000 followers.
Prototyping and Strength-Based Approaches
Victoria Nelson, a Community Engagement Officer at Napier Friends, witnessed the initial backlash when refugees were housed at Folkestone’s Napier Barracks in 2020. “People don’t even realise it’s there now,” she said. “If anything, the impact has been positive.”
Through the Lab, Napier Friends prototyped skill exchange sessions on open-access technology and language, emphasising appreciative inquiry — a strengths-based approach that focuses on what works rather than deficits. The organisation began engaging wider networks, including local cafés and musicians, to design co-beneficial exchanges. Drawing on the strengths of young, tech-savvy asylum seekers, these sessions will include language tutoring and tech support.
Navigating the Digital
Many organisations feel pressured to adopt digital strategies to advance their work. While rejecting digital is a luxury few can afford, going online requires resources hence identifying the right strategy is crucial.
For Nelson, an effective digital strategy highlights the contributions of asylum seekers. “They achieve so many amazing things that I just want to shout about that,” she said. “It’s important to spread that positive message.”
For Rawf, digital offers a means to inspire and create a local community centred on well-being and care, and for People United, it offers a deeper exploration of their art installations.
Organisations and individuals need to find a digital strategy that works for their audiences and aligns with their goals.
Third-sector organisations continue to support asylum seekers’ in their new lives in myriad ways
Despite its important role, Napier Barracks is likely to close, the land around it is already being redeveloped into housing. Its legacy of offering asylum seekers the first refuge will soon end.
The team from Napier Drop In wanted to capture the memory of the welcome, resistance, and resilience of asylum seekers. Through the Lab they came up with two project ideas to achieve this goal: for the community garden cultivated by the asylum seekers to be incorporated into the new development or creating a public artwork to commemorate their resilience.
Throughout the project, participants were asked to reflect on their process through a series of self-reporting questionnaires. This information is being analysed by the project team to explore what parts of the project can be codified and shared to help others achieve similar outcomes, outputs and most importantly, meaningful impact. “We’re humbled that these organisations let us in, and frankly, in awe of the results they have achieved,” said Adhikari.
Aram, whose name translates to ‘calm’ in Kurdish, cheekily edits the British quote: “We (local third-sector organisations) have to ‘keep Aram and carry on.’ ”
Join us in Leeds for the second edition of the Storytelling Lab
Is your organisation working to enable refugees and asylum seekers to become part of civic life? Are you struggling to engage your local communities ? We invite you to attend the second edition of the New Narratives Storytelling Lab to reimagine and refresh your projects.
Click here to register your place.
About the author:
Mahima Jain is a journalist covering the socio-economics of gender, health, and the environment. She uses the lens of inequity and injustice in systems for her features, long-form articles and podcasts. She has bylines in over two dozen global and Indian publications. She was a climate journalism fellow at the Constructive Institute, Aarhus University, Denmark in 2024. She previously held editorial positions at The Hindu Group and the London School of Economics. Mahima was a finalist for the Thomson Foundation Young Journalist Award in 2021, and the Mumbai Press Club Redink Awards, and the Society of Publishers in Asia Awards. She’s a two time UNFPA Laadli Award winner for her coverage of gender issues in India. You can see her work at www.mahimajain.in
