Migration Matters: The Sheffield festival celebrating the positive impact of migrants and refugees

When Sheffield became the UK’s first City of Sanctuary for asylum seekers and refugees in 2007, it was recognition for the efforts of its communities and organisations in creating a culture of solidarity, inclusivity and welcome.

The Migration Matters Festival, founded nearly a decade later by theatre producer Sam Holland echoes that status, designed to celebrate the positive impact that migrants and refugees have on not just the city, but the country as a whole.

It’s back for a seventh year this week, with an itinerary of 50 events bringing Sheffield’s communities together through art, performance and celebration.

Festival director Sam says: “The festival shows you who is in the city. It shows you who your neighbours are and it is a lovely, eye-opening way of getting to know the richness of Sheffield.”

The festival shines a light on the many international communities which call the city home but may not be widely known - such as people of the Karen group in Myanmar who have settled in the S6 postcode area.

There’s always a focus on celebration, but this year more so than ever after the turbulence and heartache of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We really need that,” Sam, 31, continues. “We’ve just come out of two years of pandemic, we haven’t been able to be in shared spaces safely…

“A big part of the festival is about having the freedom to do that again and to experience that joy. It’s about providing a platform for all these cultures to have a place, to feel understood, to feel seen, to feel heard.

“Art has such a way of breaking down barrier and preconceptions about people. It’s amazing seeing how people have been impacted by coming to events at the festival, learning things they never knew and changing their opinions.”

Sam started working on the Migration Matters Festival in 2016, the year of the Brexit referendum and the Syrian refugee crisis. After the Windrush scandal and a rise in hate crime, there has never been a more important time to promote unity, he says.

“There are so many ways in which people have been made to feel unwelcome and the idea of the festival is that it’s a real beacon of hope, of solidarity and compassion and also hopefully a way to build ties between people of different cultures and backgrounds.”

Looking back to it beginnings in 2016, he adds: “It first grew out of a concern that Sheffield, and the UK in general, felt like it was turning in a slightly negative way towards the way immigrants and refugees were perceived. There was a big outcry about us taking in Syrian refugees at the time.

“For me, as someone who has grown up in Sheffield, it felt out of character for a country that across history has welcome refugees, people who have been persecuted in their own countries…I thought it was important that we were making public meaningful displays to show people who have migrated here that they are welcome and that this is a country that celebrates them.”

This year, the festival, is taking place from June 17 to 25, running during Refugee Week (June 20 to 26), a UK-wide celebration of the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary.

Guest programmer Taiwanese artist Howl Yuan has put together a special strand of events, from talks to films and theatre exploring the concept of diaspora.

Acclaimed British author, poet and broadcaster Lemn Sissay will talk about his extraordinary life and share extracts from his book, My Name is Why and The Phosphoros Theatre Company, made up of refugee performers, will showcase their latest play All The Beds I Have Slept In.

Other highlights include performances from Nigerian musician Seun Kuti, son of the Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti and all-female world music supergroup Les Amazones d’Afrique.

Akeim Toussaint Buck, who has worked with the Northern School of Contemporary Dance and is a dancer, choreographer and musician, is also bringing his solo production Windows of Displacement to the festival.

“It’s a dance theatre solo show where I’m speaking, singing, dancing, exploring themes of migration, colonialism, capitalism, culture,” says Akeim, who moved to the UK from Jamaica at the age of ten.

“It’s a reflection on my own migration but also looking at the different experiences of displacement, whether it’s geographic, economical or spiritual in some sense as well.”

It was inspired in part by his own experience of becoming a British citizen “and that people don’t know a great deal about the trauma that process puts on people. No one really talks about it”.

“I needed to heal from the process myself,” he says “and I know of other people who need to heal and this is my way of healing, to create art out of it.”

One of the festival’s aims is to create a platform to champion the voices of people who are “so often pushed to the side” and whose identities are marginalised.

Sam says it echoes Sheffield’s historical record of welcoming people from across the world, noting how he still recalls with pride the city coming together with outpourings of support during the Kosovo refugee crisis when he was growing up.

“The festival mirrors the times when the city has come together and reaches out to the different communities who call Sheffield home, combating the division that a lot of far right press and organisations will try to espouse,” he says.

It celebrates people who have migrated to the country, including those who have been forced to flee, and the contributions that they have made.

“Equally it’s not just about people who have come from hardship, it’s also examining everyone’s stories of migration and heritage because it’s universal and connects us all,” explains Sam, who was born in the US and has lived in Sheffield since the age of four.

“It’s a way of us all acknowledging that and coming together to celebrate those differences, rather than letting them be something that divides us.”

“We going to see probably the biggest forced migration the world has ever seen in the next 10 to 15 years because of climate change,” he adds.

“On top of war, on top of more ‘standard’ forms of migration, we’re going to see people moving from places which are more climate affected...It’s essential people are reminded of shared humanitarian values. We have a duty to support each other. We’re all human.”

Migration Matters Festival runs for nine days from Friday, June 17.