HomeArt – participatory arts with migrant and refugee women in the East of England

This project aims to capture migrant and refugee women’s stories through the arts, using feminist participatory methodologies. Through a series of women-artist led workshops, migrant and refugee women explore the concept of home through various art forms, including, music, painting, crochet, collage, photography. The purpose is to identify how their narrative changes and evolves through the artistic processes, how homemaking is organised and practised in contemporary everyday life. Homemaking practices as expressed through art-based workshops, capture conceptualisations and meanings of ‘home’ that create a type of informal learning that goes beyond the confines of the physical space of the home into the new place of residence, linking it with notions of citizenship and social inclusion. By bringing a specific ‘practice’ approach and using visual methodologies to examine women’s narratives, we aim to bring a unique view on how women, as artist home-makers, represent and re-create themselves.