Refugee Week is a country-wide celebration of refugee contribution to the UK’s artistic and cultural scene, aiming to improve relations between communities.
This year, it falls from 17th to 25th June. Migration Matters Festival is the largest event of the week, and celebrates the positive impact of migration on Sheffield as a city. You need tickets to get in to specific events, but they’re sold on a pay-what-you-feel basis, in line with their ethos that this festival should be accessible to all.
Visitors can expect to see a wide range of events (50 in total), covering all cultural genres, from visual art, to theatre, to poetry, dance, music, and so much more! The events take place across various venues in Sheffield: the Foundry, Botanical Gardens, Leadmill, and the Millennium Galleries, to name just a few.
The organisers are especially excited to be able to get Migration Matters up and running at its best, following its 2020 deliverance over Zoom, and a tentative in-person return last summer. They also welcome any individual donations, which help to keep the festival free for those who need it, and the link for donation can be easily found on the Migration Matters website.
But don’t just take my word for it. Festival director Sam Holland started working on the idea back in 2016, in the wake of the Brexit Referendum and its effect on the UK’s perception of migrants.
He said: “There isn’t anything more special than seeing community cohesion in action, to be meeting people of all the different places who have called Sheffield a sanctuary.”
The festival has always been popular in Sheffield, and highlights to look forward to this year include:
- Windows of Displacement: choreographer Akeim Toussaint Buck weaves together song, dance, and spoken word to explore history ‘through the contextual lens of imperialism, colonialism and global displacement’ (19th June)
- Les Amazones D’Afrique: an all-female musical collective performing on 20th June at the Leadmill
- Negotiating Identities – A Film Night with Queer East: ‘exploring what it means to be queer, Asian and migrant today’ (23rd June)
