Artwork: Milt Masur, Horizons, 2008
A new art, faith and culture group with a Christian ethos has emerged in Leicester, bringing together women from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, who are mostly asylum seekers and refugees.
Begun by our diocesan Intercultural Pioneer Ministers, Kat Gibson and Vee Pedro-Pinto, ‘Art & Soul’ offers women a place to paint together and share their faith journeys, alongside passages from the Bible and narratives from marginalised communities.
“In the Art & Soul sessions we encourage and cultivate intergenerational relationships as we learn from one another’s worldviews and diverse cultural heritage,” explains Kat. “We also seek to share the abundant love and gracious welcome of Jesus, and ponder elements of life, death, teachings and parables, seeking what we might learn and apply in our own lives.”
Topics such as social justice and reconciliation, are also explored.
An integral part of these sessions is to give voice to those often unheard stories and experiences; listening deeply to one another and expressing elements of those stories together through art.
They also communicate non-verbally, such as through art and hospitality, which enables them to include and involve those who speak limited English.
Kat says: “Expressing something of who we are through the medium of paints can be very liberating.
“Within the asylum system there seems to be a crushing lack of agency. Offering a welcoming space where people have opportunity to paint whatever they like and share something of who they are if they choose to do so, can restore something of a person’s sense of humanity, dignity and agency. We see this space as holy ground, in which friendships can begin and grow can have a transformative effect on the lives of people who may have felt deeply isolated, particularly as we emerge out of the Pandemic.”
The group has evolved over the last year, and began organically with a few women Kat was meeting pastorally.
“We’d get together once a week or so in parks or cafes and would chat about life and faith and people’s hopes, dreams and experiences, and learn from each other,” Kat explains. “A few of them expressed that they’d love to do something fun like painting together, so in April - May we started doing that in my house and garden and in our friend Lynne’s house and garden (when Lockdown permitted), alongside walks in parks and the like. That’s how it started – before it had a name.”
As the group grew and became a more formal part of Roots Intercultural Worshiping Community, Vee also got more involved, they named themselves Art & Soul, and they applied for Seed Funding, so they could invite more of the women who were seeking asylum in the hotels.
Ironically, the same week the funding was approved, nine of the ten women in the group were moved to accommodation in different towns and cities across the UK, and they were told there were no more women in the hotels, only men.
Kat says: “It was so sad to say goodbye to the ladies, but it was also a joy to be able to connect each of them with churches and activities and people we knew in each of the places where they moved to.”
Soon afterwards, the Taliban took control of Afghanistan and lots of people were evacuated, including several families who were brought to a hotel in Leicester. Kat and Vee shared a few intimate sessions with some Afghani women, before they became too busy with offers of other activities across the city.
Then, in December, several new young families started living at the two asylum hotels again, and Art & Soul re-launched with some of those new families in the New Year.
They’ve had 15 people at each of the two sessions so far, with several others hoping to join in, too.
Kat says: “At each phase of its short life so far, Art & Soul has looked completely different. Today, we have several families and some very energetic kids!
“In this latter phase the language barrier has been even more difficult, and we’re looking for someone who can speak Sorani Kurdush who might come along to translate.
“With so many kids in the room it’s made conversation and story-sharing harder than before, but we’re enjoying the chaos and muddling through, making the most of small opportunities to chat with individuals when larger-group conversation is harder, and meeting with some of the families for walks outside of the sessions to get to know each other better.
“Since the group is such a transient community it’s quite hard to predict who will still be in Leicester in the coming weeks and months!”
The next steps for Art & Soul will be to add a musical element into the sessions, with Vee offering to share her talents in this area.
Kat and Vee have been quite intentional about mapping and getting to know some of the other organisations who work with asylum seeking and refugee families, trying to figure out how they can best work together and share the learning, while connecting up the dots in terms of practical support.
During the last couple of months, they have started to see a cross over between Art & Soul and their IWC Roots, with a few of the women joining Roots, and a few others saying they’d like to come along.
“Bringing people together is such a blessing and makes our hearts sing!” says Kat. “We’re thinking logistically now about how Roots may need to evolve in order to best welcome people, in terms of space and translation and any spoken or unspoken expectations we may need to address. It’s so wonderful to see the friendships developing naturally and to see people learning from one another’s wisdom, too.”
God is most certainly good, and to be found at the heart of Art & Soul. “God is definitely in the chaos!” agrees Kat. “In the conversations where people start to open up about what they’ve been through, knowing that they’re not in that moment being forced to share their trauma-story for an interview as part of their asylum claim, but choosing to open up to a friend who cares and prays for them.
“God’s in the moments when people say they start to feel human for the first time in months. In the tears, and the hugs, and the charades and Google Translate, and the giggles as people get paint on their faces.
“In the clamour of the Lord’s Prayer and the ‘peace be with you’ and the ‘holy holy holy/Hosanna in the highest’ being said together in around eight different languages as 13 of us share a meal together and share Communion, crammed into a small living room with kids playing on the floor in the middle of it all,” she says.
“This is the bizarre beauty of the Kingdom, and it’s so wonderful!”