Newsletter

On this page you’ll find links to our intermittent newsletter, which we started threading together at the beginning of March 2020. It has been a welcomed aspect to Stories in Transit, having the opportunity to follow up on the work and projects of many individuals and groups. We have found continual inspiration and sources of creativity in sharing these newsletters and hope people have enjoyed receiving them. If you have feedback, please email us here!

The newsletter typically features updates from our workshops, collaborators, associated projects and upcoming events - you can sign up to receive them here! Please do get in contact if you have any related material you would like to share with us.

Here is the page which has an archive of all our newsletters, but below you will find more information about what each of the newsletters holds.

The most recent newsletter, #34, can be found here. We will include descriptions of the missing newsletters soon!

On March 5th 2024, we shared Newsletter #28 which

On November 11th 2023, Newsletter #27 was sent out, focusing mainly on the Stories in Transit window display with Bookartbookshop, called 'Ways of Telling', along with Marina's piece 'No Freedom to Move', for The New York Review of Books.

On October 9th 2023, our newsletter #26 features Marcia Farquhar's writing about Roddy Maude Roxby ('the wit, the writer, the performer, painter, penciler, sculptor, raconteur, poet, mask maker'!), Yorkshire Festival of Storytelling, Palfest and various exhibitions.

On September 26th 2023, we sent out Newsletter #25, which includes the 'Longplayer Conversation 2023: Sara Mire and Richard Sabin', ‘Making and Remaking the Jewish East End: Space, Language and Time’, an interdisciplinary research project and Marina's lecture at Goldsmiths, 'Viral Spiral: Multiple Shape-shifting from Ovid to Covid'.

On July 7th 2023, we sent out Newsletter #24, which mentions the Refugee Tales Walk 2023 and an event at the Italian Cultural Institute that Marina was part of, with the writer of Dandelions, by Thea Lenarduzzi.

On May 17th 2023, Newsletter #23 includes Oxford being awarded University of Sanctuary status, the work of Yasmine Seale; “Trauma and Hope in Gaza”: A Round Table with Dr Yasser Abu-Jamei @ Middle East Centre, Oxford, and the British Academy Summer Showcase 2023.

On April 4th 2023, we shared Newsletter #22, which features a critique of the Illegal Migration Bill of 2023, Refugee Tales, the all-night Epic of Gilgamesh, European Writers' Festival and book recommendations including 11 Lives: Stories from Palestinian Exile, edited by Muhammad Ali Khalidi.

Our first newsletter of 2023, after a pause of a few months, was Newsletter #21, which shared photos and news of a workshop with Stories & Supper, Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu's Slade Lecture series and plenty more book recommendations, amongst other things.

Newsletter #20 was mailed out in autumn 2022, including some good news from Palermo, Badia Obaid's performance at P21 Gallery, an event with Birkbeck - 'How to co-exist in a time of rage, or thinking with giocherendan' - and some book recommendations.

Newsletter #19 includes the em>Free Alaa campaign, the project HOAF and the work of Sabine Réthoré and her project em>Mediterranean without borders.

Newsletter #18, includes Refugee Week 2022; sharing the recording of the event, 'Writing Unbarred'; a workshop creating a collective 'Living Almanac' in Colchester, as part of Essex Book Festival, and an event with the Solitudes Project.

Newsletter #17: the most unwelcome news about the Nationality and Borders Bill; the Salusbury World Refugee Centre Annual Conversation, with Marina Warner; updates on our most recent workshop with participants from Hackney Migrant Centre; and a couple of events at Birkbeck Arts Week 2022.

Newsletter #16: our response and signposting information regarding the news from Ukraine; the film Silence Heard Loud premiered at the London Human Rights Watch Film Festival in March; various book recommendations and updates from collaborators and friends.

Newsletter #15: news from Palermo, some book recommendations, including Goran Baba Ali's The Glass Wall and Yasmine Seale's annotated translation of the Arabian Nights

Newsletter #14: news from JC Niala, about their Imagining Futures project working with Nubian communities in Kenya; sharing Southerly Journal's most recent issue, 'Writing Through Fences - Archipelago of Letters', a brilliant anthology devoted entirely to the work of past and present refugees and many other updates and recommendations.

Newsletter #13: news about workshops with Stories & Supper, who have recently published a new anthology, In the Morning Birds Were Singing; Refugee Week have announced their 2022 theme as 'Healing' and Art Refuge had a fundraising raffle, amounting to a whopping £14,380.

Newsletter #12: news about the film screening and conversation around 3000 Nights (Mai Masri, 2015); DAAR's exhibition at the Mosaic Rooms; a mention of Migrateful and various other features.

Newsletter #11: introducing Stories & Supper, who we started collaborating with in October; a new short film released about the Compass Project, at Birkbeck; newly established arts organisation History Of A Future (HOAF) & book recommendations including I saw the air fly by, created by Sirkhane DARKROOM.

Newsletter #10: updates from our collaborators Giocherenda, in Palermo; platforming the artist Mounira Al Solh's wonderful textile art piece In Love In Blood; Issam Kourbaj's exhibition in the Netherlands; Amal began her long walk across Europe.

Newsletter #9: various contributions to Refugee Week, including Compass Collective's audio piece; we shared Samak Bilab Bi Delo , a design collective that works with gradual design interventions and collaborations between cross-border artisans of the Levant; Refugee Tales updates and their newest book, Refugee Tales IV.

Additional news about the Arabic Translation Workshops!

Newsletter #8: the brilliant For Sama was screened as part of Birkbeck Arts Week; Marina's piece for Extinction Rebellion's Writers Rebel blog; a mention of the wonderful Salusbury World

Newsletter #7: Refugee Tales launched their Walking Inquiryh, coinciding with the Public Inquiry into mistreatment at Brook House immigration removal centre; We Wrote in Symbols, edited by SiT collaborator Selma Dabbagh, was published; the Migration Museum were looking for trustees and continued releasing their 'Departures' podcast series

Extras, sandwiched between more full newsletters included sharing a couple of newly published books: Refugee Hosts' writer-in-residence Yousif M. Qasmiyeh released his poetry collection Writing the Camp and there was a launch for Dana Mills' book Dance and Activism: A Century of Radical Dance Across the World

Newsletter #6: Birkbeck hosted a weekend of critical thought, Dissent in Dark Times; we shared some images from our second online workshop with Compass Collective and some books were shared - Philip Terry and Sophie Herxheimer both published new works with ZimZalla and Marina Warner her unreliable memoir, Inventory of a Life Mislaid

Newsletter #5: the Imperial War Museum re-opened, with the exhibition 'Refugees: Forced to Flee' installed; Joan Ashworth shared the animation part of the workshop process with her piece in the Journal for Animation Studies https://journal.animationstudies.org/joan-ashworth-animation-is-a-refuge-arrivants-dwell-in-the-stories-of-the-mind/; Edmund de Waal's installation library of exile https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/edmund-de-waal-library-exilewas on view at the British Museum.

Newsletter #4: we shared the screening of and discussion about Frontiers of Dreams and Fears, Mai Masri's astonishing documentary film bridging a group of children in Shatila Refugee Camp, Beirut, and another group near Bethlehem; Journeys Festival highlights; Complicité's Teachers Pack and Action for Hope's guidebook directed at music teachers and cultural workers who are active within marginalized communities that have little access to cultural services.

Newsletter #3: Wafa' Tarnowska's book Amazing Women of the Middle East; poet and collaborator Caroline Bergvall's project Sonic Atlas was filmed and shared online; there was an event celebrating Jem Finer's Longplayer, the Longplayer Assembly - 12 hours of relayed conversations; Toyin Ojih Odutola's exhibition A Countervailing Theory was on at the Barbican Art Gallery.

Newsletter #2: Giocherenda's wonderful new website and all their items and games on etsy; Lee Shearman and Joan Ashworth took part in an event with the Royal Drawing School, presenting Stories in Transit, alongside Emily Haworth-Booth.

Newsletter #1 was shared just before the first lockdown, so many of the plans mentioned here were cancelled/postponed. We did, however, share brief news about the workshop in Palermo, which took place in February 2020. The film documenting that workshop series can be found here.