Refugee Week Greece: Arts of Diaspora

Refugee Week Greece - Arts of Diaspora

19-25 June 2023

Refugee Week is a global and dynamic movement, a cultural festival celebrating the contribution, creativity and authenticity of people having experienced forced displacement. It takes place every year on the occasion of World Refugee Day, which is commemorated on the 20^th of June. After a successful first year, Refugee Week Greece is back from 19 to 25 June 2023 organised by We are Community and Athens Comics Library.

Refugee Week Greece is a community led, all welcome, fully accessible festival. We strongly believe in the importance and values of equality and diversity, and we are committed to promoting equality of opportunity for event organisers, organisations and the public attending our events. Our aim is to understand and celebrate our diverse community and recognise the value of each individual’s contribution. We believe that artists should be supported in their quest for a platform to express themselves and for that reason we produce and promote performances and installations for artists of diaspora, providing them with the necessary resources to bring their art to a receptive and supportive audience, and preparing them to continue their professional growth in other parts of the world.

The initiative is a cultural festival, part of a dynamic global movement, and promotes the contribution, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking refuge. The event is implemented with the kind support of the City of Athens with the participation of the Athens Coordination Centre for Migrant & Refugee issues (ACCMR), the Migrant Integration Center (KEM) and other social integration programmes of the City of Athens, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, in Greece, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Greece Country Office and the Network for Children’s Rights.

The theme for this year’s festival is “compassion”. We invite you to celebrate what compassion looks like in action. Together we can create a shared understanding of compassion to ensure we are extending it widely to all. We know how interconnected our world is: how something seemingly “far away” impacts everyone. All of this makes us even more aware of the need to widen our circles of compassion. Within our own experiences are all the tools we need to be compassionate, not just to ourselves and those in our immediate circle but to all our human neighbours and our one shared home, planet earth.

“Our task must be to free ourselves – by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”- Albert Einstein

Refugee Week is a platform in which all are welcome to take part in, whether it is attending or organising an event, activity or workshop. Already, prominent refugee organisations in Greece are participating by sharing their message of solidarity, inclusion and social equality.

We have found community participation as a vital element in supporting our people with special needs and are proud to embrace inclusion in all our programs for our participants. Our activities and projects are developed for our participants to involve and contribute to the social life to the extent of their ability as well as to pursue their own goals.

Involvement in community activities in non-segregated spaces would help people to learn new skills or brush-up their hobbies. It also helps people to build and improve their confidence. Community participation paves the way for self-development and contribution. The sense of contributing, for instance, participation in a project which contributes to the society can give you a sense of pleasure and meaningfulness.