Music in Detention works across the UK’s immigration detention centres and with groups in the community. Immigration Detention is an administrative process where people are detained whilst their applications for asylum and leave to remain are processed. Every year over 24 000 people are held in detention centres. We work with musicians who lead workshops, where sound tracks and art works are created together with different people. We want to platform important voices, who have fascinating insights and stories to tell, which are not often heard. We usually link people in immigration detention with community groups, so that they can make tracks together, through musicians taking music in and out of detention centres and community groups. The 2 groups never meet.
In 2018, MID artists Kev and Arji led a music making project between people detained in Harmondsworth Immigration Detention Centre, based near Heathrow Airport and a group from the Pembroke Centre (NHS CNWL’s Hillingdon and Harrow Early Intervention Service), also based near Heathrow Airport in Ruislip. The group produced an impressive CD of tracks, called ‘All You Need is Hope’.
Following the 2020 COVID 19 Pandemic Lock Down, most face to face contact across the country ceased. This included people attending the Pembroke Centre and people locked up in Harmondsworth. As the nation responded by moving online, we set up a new project, again with Arji and Kev and with people from the Pembroke Centre using zoom and What’s App. These poems are the outcome of this project. Now we hope to take what we’ve learnt from new ways or working and these amazing poems back into immigration detention.
Post project evaluation:
Due to the unprecedented context of Covid-19, this project has been an exploratory experience at different levels. It was the first time that we have conducted a project exclusively in the online context, through live video sessions accompanied by group messages in-between sessions. This presented creative limitations which led to new forms of practice. It was interesting to see the level of human connection that is possible through this medium.
The lockdown period presented all sorts of mental health challenges, including isolation, loss of earnings, familial tension, as well as anxiety over catching the virus, and bereavement of loved ones who passed away. This has highlighted the issue of mental health beyond those with formal diagnoses to the general population, with the potential to reduce the ‘othering’ or ‘labelling’ which may accompany a diagnosis. This project explored the role of collaborative creative practice as an approach in the maintenance of good mental health during challenging times.
Whereas the usual conventions of professional practice might require that a practitioner leaves their personal life at the door, in this context it felt appropriate to share more openly and poetry-writing provided an effective container for this. Participants were invited to respond to tasks around identity, family and community, with each able to share within their own comfort range. It was significant that everyone in the ‘room’ was engaged as a participant, including both ‘artists’ as well as support workers from the Pembroke Centre and Music in Detention. This helped to make a democratic space in which we were able to connect beyond titles, roles or labels. Each task revealed little insights into our personal lives; the ways we spend our free time, the special objects in our homes, the appreciation someone felt for their mother. These insights generated feelings of connection and safety, allowing us to share more personal aspects of our lives with the potential to release challenging emotions.