CRAFT REFUGE

I want to change people’s perspective on the potential of what it is they are throwing away. I started this project with the observation of tents. Watching as thousands of festival goers discarded perfectly good tents at the end of weekends. Whilst these identical shelters could mean the difference between life and death, for refugees living in unfathomable conditions globally. Those very same few layers of nylon are all that they have to keep warm and feel protected.

Once a tent is broken its unfit as a shelter it becomes a waste of space. But the materials stay the same. Modern tents are such an amalgamation of materials it makes them very difficult to recycle. Almost all of them end up in land fill eventually. However, I believe that good can be made of what is essentially a rolled-up bag of usable matter.

Shelter is one of the essentials a person needs to survive. But a person doesn’t just need to survive, there are many other fundamental needs that help a person live a happy, sustainable, and fulfilled life. To name a few, are opportunity, identity, and creativity. I collected broken tents and repurpose them to create tools for refugees to use in a workshop that travels to them. Tools that can be used to celebrate the traditional craft originating in country’s refugees have been forced to flee from. Creating a space that gives them the chance to regain what they have left behind and ease the detachment from home.