Hear Me Out brings people living in immigration detention centres together with professional musicians and people living in the community, to create and perform powerful artistic work, and convey it to new audiences through live and recorded performance, thereby increasing wellbeing and empathy, and helping change attitudes to migrants.
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Total raised so far £12,341
+ est. £1141.75
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THE PROBLEM
Thousands of people are detained every year within the UK’s immigration detention system (an average of 28,000 people each year 2009-2018). Some of these people arrive in small boats from across the channel, risking their lives, perhaps losing loved ones, in the process. Some are fleeing unimaginable terrors in their home country: war, persecution, torture.
Public awareness of the UK’s detention system, and the experiences of people held within it, is extremely low. Narratives around immigration are often fraught with anxiety and distrust, ignoring real lives, real experiences, and real human feeling. Those who directly experience immigration detention are themselves rarely heard.
The COVID-19 crisis has made this ordeal even more stressful, with visits and activities suspended and transmission hard to contain. Many were released early in the lockdown, briefly bringing numbers down to a historic low, but those still detained have had to contend with intensified isolation and the risk of infection, without human contact or positive activities to provide comfort or purpose, and release an even more distant prospect.
WHO WE ARE
Hear Me Out uses the connecting, empowering medium of music to improve the situation of some of the most marginalised people in our society—immigration detainees.
Hear Me Out’s vision is of a society in which migrants are treated with dignity and humanity, confidently using the power of their voices to find common ground with the people around them. Active since 2006, our work supports people with experience of immigration detention to recover their sense of wellbeing and resilience, and make their voices heard, by:
- Offering a creative outlet that supports self-confidence and agency
- Providing positive experiences to counter the psychological damage of detention
- Enabling communication over the wall which separates them from the outside world
- Building platforms to bring their creative work and life experience to a public audience.
WHAT YOUR DONATION WILL FUND
£235 will pay for one of our trusted associated artists to run a workshop for the day
£500 will pay for the production of recordings and CDs
£1000 will fund the cost of a special performance
