Understanding Displacement Aesthetics and Creating Change in the Art Gallery for Refugees, Migrants and Host Communities

There are 70.8 million forcibly displaced people in the world today (UNHCR Global Trends in Forced Displacement, 2018). Refugees, migrants and asylum seekers are at the forefront of international politics as populations defined by 'crisis', while the UN and humanitarian agencies attempt to bridge gaps in national policies on aid and resettlement. Visual and craft artists have played an historically important yet lesser-studied role in UN and humanitarian welfare programmes, in art therapy, and in communicating human rights. However, refugees and migrants can also be represented as nameless human flows and passive recipients of aid, which may strain both refugee and host communities. Significantly, the art industry and art galleries encounter parallel problems in aestheticizing the experience of people affected by war and displacement. While art asserts a powerful role in challenging hostile representations of refugees and migrants, in reality opportunities for refugee artists and curators in mainstream gallery culture, and opportunities for interpersonal dialogue and intercultural exchange with host communities remain limited.

Understanding Displacement Aesthetics proposes a timely reappraisal of this field of vision by historicising the humanitarian aspirations of art and craft, and analysing the impact of artistic responses to displacement and refugees. It investigates how 'displacement aesthetics' emerged after 1945 in both the practice and exhibition of art and craft, UN-sponsored welfare programmes in Europe and Palestine, and international art museums. The research seeks to understand the relationship between the uses and practice of art, the influence of and resistance to cultural stereotypes, art's interplay with humanitarian sentiment and action, and the political categorisation of refugees and migrants. Seeking to understand and utilise this history, the project identifies how displacement aesthetics continues to operate in the current refugee crisis in the international art world and in grass-roots artistic initiatives in Greece, Palestine, Australia and the UK. Crucially, this project seeks to move beyond a focus on tropes, by amplifying how art practices can enhance the potential and resilience of refugee communities.

The ambition of the project is, therefore, to transform displacement aesthetics by bringing together academics, artists, curators from migrant and refugee backgrounds together with the internationally renowned arts NGO In Place of War, and two leading art galleries in the UK, Manchester Art Gallery (MAG) and the Whitworth Art Gallery (WAG). The research addresses the ambitions of creative artists and curators, who, as migrants and refugees, face particular career barriers, and yet can be obliged to focus their practice on their outsider identity. A programme of inclusive, co-designed art projects will facilitate art-making, participatory exhibitions, and create a community 'welcome space' as a permanent infrastructural change in Manchester Art Gallery. These projects will generate research data to evaluate how effectively art museums can support refugee/migrant artists and communities and build solidarity across communities.

The project is led by a team of experienced scholars in the cultural history of war and displacement (PI), art history and contemporary art (CI), cultural theory and resilience studies (RF), and participatory art methods (team). Distinctively, these senior academics are also experienced curators, and the CI is also a practising artist, who will co-design the impact projects in partnership with MAG, WAG and the NGO In Place of War in collaboration with local participants in Manchester. This is an exceptional opportunity to catalyse the history of displacement aesthetics and make sustainable changes that benefit local communities, while advancing approaches to collecting, curating and representing art.

The research will underpin three initiatives in Greater Manchester evolving from the collaboration of the academic team with refugee/migrant artists and curators, local communities, the internationally renowned arts NGO In Place of War (IPOW), and the curatorial and learning engagement teams from Manchester Art Gallery (MAG) and the Whitworth Art Gallery (WAG). This work follows on from prior collaborations, research-based exhibition projects and the PI/CI's network Visual Art, Humanitarianism and Human Rights. It also makes critical use of the academic team's additional expertise as exhibition curators [PI/CI], international artist [CI] and cultural producer [RF], and their track record in working collaboratively with artists, communities, museum professionals and educators. The creative and gallery projects outlined below will also produce key data for analysis in the published outputs.

Impact Project 1: In Place of War (IPOW) project with artists and curators from refugee/migrant backgrounds based in Greater Manchester. The academic leads will work with arts NGO, In Place of War, and institutional partners the Whitworth Art Gallery and Manchester Art Gallery, to tailor a programme that draws on their expertise, the research into refugee arts initiatives and the ambitions of refugee/migrant artists and curators. Initial research and co-design will provide skills development, networking and mentoring by artists and gallery professionals, studio space, and career opportunities for participants. A Certificate of Participation will be provided by the University of Manchester. It leads into two co-designed art projects:

Impact Project 2: A permanent change by transforming the Grand Tour gallery into a 'Welcome Space' in Manchester Art Gallery (MAG): the academic team will research the historic and contemporary collections of MAG, identifying artists who have experienced conflict and migration, and works pertinent to the cross-cutting themes of journeys, home, belonging, family, and humour. Workshops will be held with refugee/migrant artists and curators, artists from the IPOW project, and local Manchester host community participants, to shape the Welcome Space and build bridges between constituents. An artist will be commissioned to visualise the stories uncovered in the research, and a designer will oversee the creation of this new, permanent space at MAG. Their collaboration with the research and education teams will produce data for the project monograph and other publications. This project presents a unique opportunity to apply research for a permanent and sustainable impact that benefits all of Manchester's communities, and to study the evolution and evaluate the impact of such a major infrastructural change.

Impact Project 3: An exhibition at the Whitworth Art Gallery (WAG): Academic research into the historic and contemporary collections of WAG in relation to displacement, refugee/migrant art and experience will complement the research at MAG. Drawing on this research, new, updated entries for the Emu digital database will be co-created by researchers and curators. Over the course of fieldwork, the team will research additional historical and international loans of art works (from Europe, Palestine, Australia, the UK and USA) for the exhibition. Responding to the academic research, museum curatorial and education staff will collaborate with a commissioned artist to run a set of participatory art workshops with the IPOW refugee/migrant artists and local communities. The resulting exhibition will examine the history, practice and major aesthetic themes in displacement art and craft, challenge its history and practice, while providing a platform for refugee/migrant artists, seeking to explain but also challenge common assumptions about displacement and refugees arising from this visual history (such as the use of humour in art).