Think theatre is just for Broadway? Scheherazade Initiatives sees it as the key to the refugee crisis

At Scheherazade, we choose to see wholeness, not lack. A refugee is, above all, a legal status. Simply that. It is not a statement on someone’s ‘quality’ as a human being. The problem with talking about working with refugees is that it reduces a group of disparate human beings, each with their own unique gifts, to a ‘problem to be solved’, rather than an opportunity to be harnessed, allowing each individual within that group to define themselves in myriad different ways, each unique to themselves.

And this is why participation in the arts are so important. At Scheherazade, we use theatre to empower refugees with the skills to build their new lives. Creative practice is at the heart of what we do. To create is something that is intrinsic to each one of us. Our creative capacity is not weakened by difficulty, on the contrary, it is often strengthened and enhanced in the challenges that life throws at us. This is why I have always had huge hope in ‘populations who move’ — especially those that have had to exhibit extraordinary resilience and determination to escape unimaginably difficult circumstances and risk their lives to build a new life. The capacity to dream and imagine, the interior resources needed to make great changes, and to let go everything one has known to date is at the heart of the refugee crisis — and is the heart of creative practice too and the work we do at Scheherazade.