Journey of UnBelonging, Commissioned by Journeys Festival

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Following the fantastic response in 2013 from our audiences, the local refugee community and arts organisations alike, Journeys Festival sought to produce a brand new piece of work for the East Midlands. 

Artists were encouraged to explore new ideas, opportunities, and to develop partnerships or collaborations that would positively contribute towards their future work.

From a strong pool of proposals a commissioning panel selected A Journey of UnBelonging.

 A Journey of UnBelonging: A Journeys Festival commission 

The piece was then developed and performed again at Journeys Festival 2014, and the short moving image above was screened in the ArtReach Nanoplex.

In 2015 as part of Journeys Extra, Aysegul and Mina were reunited to perform A Journey of Unbelonging once more as part of a showcase at the Platforma Conference in Leicester. 

A Journey of UnBelonging: the Moving Image

The piece combines live action painting, music composition, visual art and video projection. It features three Refugee Artists who had not worked together before.

After three development sessions in a nearby warehouse, Mina Mikhail Salama (Egyptian composer/instrumentalist), Aysegul Balkose (Turkish performance & visual artist) and Joao Paulo Simoes (director & moving image maker) brought their creation to Curve theatre, Leicester. 

A Journey of UnBelonging premièred to an audience of 100. Nearly half of the audience were Refugees or Asylum Seekers who had never set foot in a theatre before.

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