Children Together has been re-funded as part of Merton Council’s Positive Activities Fund. This time we are working with young people who are newly arrived or currently seeking asylum in collaboration with the South London Refugee Assocation Youth Club.

We are running informal creative activities sessions for 13 – 19 year olds to explore their identity using movement, dance, drama, sound and film. The young people decide and our Children Together Artists respond to them using the model we created for the previous family play version of this project, delivered at Merton Asylum Welcome.

The project is funded for a year and has no specified outcome but might become a show, a film, a drawing…

As part of this innovative scheme iceandfire will be holding a professional development seminar in 2010, creating a hub for people who want to integrate this model into their own work with refugee and asylum seeking young people in Britain.

• Project Director: Kieran Sheehan
• Lead Artists: Lorna McGinty and Megan Saunders
• Administrator: Jaime Gutirrez

Children Together was originally created in 2007 when it ran as a pilot project at Praxis, a community refugee organisation in Bethnal Green, London. This work was all supported by the Local Network Fund of Tower Hamlets.

“There is a need for this project – for refugees and asylum seekers life is so full of the problems they have that space for other things doesn’t happen. The project provided the children with a breathing space, a space where they can express themselves through dance and movement and experience each other’s company. I think in such troubled lives that can be a powerful thing.” - Bethan Lant, Advice Manager at Praxis

See the project in action:

Children Together is funded by Awards for All.