LINKS

ARTICLES

Links to a selection of excellent articles on arts, culture and politics in relation to the issues of Asylum, Identity, Race and the Multicultural in Britain:

How UK Foreign Investment Creates Refugees and Asylum Seekers?
Dear Friends,
We are working very hard to publicise our book, Listen to the Refugee's Story: How UK Foreign Investment Creates Refugees and Asylum Seekers, as this is the main source of funding for the Refugee Project. If anyone has yet to buy a copy, it is only £5 and can be purchased by sending payment and your address to The Corner House, Station Road, Sturminster Newton, Dorset, DT10 1YJ. Please make cheques payable to 'Corner House Research'.

Benjamin Zephaniah, one of the contributors said of the book: "I am proud to be associated with this book. I've read many books this year and this is the most important one. I hope that it is as widely read as it should be and I hope that in its own small way it is able to play its part in creating a fairer, more compassionate country where refugees are seen as human beings."

If anyone knows anyone who could do a review of the book or put details on a website or if anyone has any further ideas of how we can raise awareness of this work, please contact me at this email address knklondon@gn.apc.org or on 020 7250 1315.
Thank you for your help.
Best wishes
Rachel Bird
The Refugee Project


POLEMIC: article by Rasheed Araeen in April issue of Art Monthly
'When Children of Empire Come Home'
Rasheed Araeen on the failure of the Arts Council’s cultural diversity initiatives.
‘There is a notion that those who are seen to be other have a different intellectual ability from that of people of European origin, and that they can only use this ability within their own specific cultural frameworks; and that since these cultures are rooted elsewhere they require special help. Consequently, only those who conform to this view receive insitutional support and recognition for their work.’
www.artmonthly.co.uk

THIRD TEXT, 'Is 'Refugee Art' possible?' by Alex Rotas
Vol 18, issue 1, Jan 2004, pp51-60

In the light of Leave to Remain, a recent exhibition by 'refugee artists' in London, this paper examines whether there might be an emerging category of contemporary 'refugee art' in the UK and if so, how such a genre might fit into the notions of 'cultural diversity' on which Arts Council England's funding policies are predicated. How does the word 'refugee' fit into the present discourse where the terms 'diversity' and 'ethnicity' are used interchangeably? What does the word 'refugee' signify and why are its apparent synonyms 'emigre' and 'exile' not part of contemporary verbal currency? Who creates meaning for refugee art and who determines its authenticity? The paper proposes that the category 'refugee art' takes on an empowered meaning when consciously self-imposed on their work by individual artists and becomes another diminutive category of otherness when used by the dominant culture.

This paper has just been published in the latest issue of 'Third Text', pp51 - 60

'I am one of Them' by Hari Kunzru
Why I refused a literary award sponsored by the xenophobic Mail on Sunday
Saturday November 22, 2003
The Guardian

I'm writing this in a small town in south India, and being so far away from London literary gossip, I have been relatively insulated from the reaction to my decision to turn down the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. I chose to do so - and to do so publicly - because otherwise I would have felt like a hypocrite. I understand that some of the judges are angry at the use of the prize luncheon as a political platform. To them I can only apologise and say that sometimes questions of literary value are inseparable from politics. The presence of the Mail on Sunday as sponsor of the prize made this such a moment.
To read the rest of the article please click here.

To visit Hari Kunzru's web-site please click here. From his web-site an article WHITE TEETH stands out...'Growing up in Essex in the nineteen-eighties left you in no doubt about what it meant to be British. It was a simple, passionate belonging, a brew of love for Our Boys and Our Streets and Her Majesty and hatred of anyone or anything which threatened them, whether on the Falkland Islands or down in the subway which ran under Woodford tube station. To be British meant that the question 'where are you from?', had a resounding one-word answer, and if you had the bad luck to find it more complex than that, if before you were from 'here' you or people in your family had been from somewhere else, there was a test of allegiance you could be asked to take.' To read the rest of the article please click here.

What's in a name?
'Tory or New Labour, Michael Howard or Tony Blair... if you think that's a choice, think again'
by Nick Cohen, Sunday November 2, 2003, The Observer

'If British Tories wanted to emulate the success of the American Right, then Michael Howard would have said last week: 'My father found sanctuary in Britain 60 years ago. He was saved from the gas chambers and welcomed with opened arms. The Kurd who is granted leave to remain must be as precious to us as the Queen (more precious, if Mr Burrell is to be believed). The Tory party will soon boast that it is living the British dream. In Michael Howard it will have its first Prime Minister who is the son of an asylum-seeker.' To read the rest of the article please click here.

Whose country is it anyway?
Musician Nitin Sawhney says that we should abandon our obsession with the issue of nationality
Observer, Sunday October 26, 2003, read the article here.

OBSERVER - Asylum. Myths and Reality.

INDEPENDENT - Asylum. The facts (Or why you shouldn't believe everything you are told by the Government, the Tories and the right-wing press)

Important Disclaimer
This site has been built in the belief and hope that it will provide positive and safe Web access between artists, organisations and other interested parties. No responsibility can be taken, however, either by Margareta Kern or by 'Leave to Remain' for the outcome of any contacts made as a result of information given on this site and use of the site is made on this understanding.