A Newcastle-based company has been awarded nearly £10,000 of Lottery funding to record the stories of some of the refugees and asylum seekers who have arrived in the North East.
Curiosity Creative, a social enterprise company, will work with a group of refugees and asylum seekers to record their own personal digital stories, using funding awarded by the Big Lottery Fund.
Alex Henry, Founder of Curiosity Creative, said: “We will be working with The Comfrey Project, a Gateshead-based charity which works with refugees and asylum seekers at their allotment sites across Newcastle andGateshead.
“Together, Curiosity Creative and The Comfrey Project will be helping a group of people who have sought asylum in the North East to tell their personal stories using digital storytelling methods.”
Curiosity Creative specialises in creating short digital stories using audio recordings and photographs. Staff from the organisation will work with refugees and asylum seeker in a series of workshops over the next few months, helping them to record their own stories.
Alex explained: “We want to give people a platform for their voices to be heard and to help challenge some of the negative stereotypes that exist about refugees.
“People might choose to record stories about their journeys to the UK, why they left their country of origin, or their lives here in the North East – we want to capture their voices and experiences in their own words.”
As well as letting people’s stories be heard, the project aims to equip people with new ICT and language skills, boost confidence and help them to integrate with each other and their local communities in the North East.
“We are curious about people, it is what connects us,” said Comfrey Project Chief Executive Yvonne Hartnett.
“People are naturally curious about where other people are from, whether they have children, what they did last night. For some people these are difficult questions to answer. Working with Curiosity Creative will help people understand why sometimes a person does not find it easy to talk and also create an environment where a person can talk about what is important to them.”
Once the digital stories are completed, they will become a permanent part of the North East’s permanent online archive of stories, which is managed by Curiosity Creative. The archive can be accessed atwww.curiositycreative.org.uk.
The Big Lottery Fund supports the aspirations of people who want to make life better for their communities across the UK. We are responsible for giving out 40% of the money raised by the National Lottery for good causes and invest over £650 million a year in projects big and small in health, education, environment and charitable purposes.
Since June 2004 we have awarded over £8 billion to projects that make a difference to people and communities in need, from early years intervention to commemorative travel funding for World War Two veterans.
Since the National Lottery began in 1994, £33 billion has been raised and more than 450,000 grants awarded.