Between home and here

Bristol Refugee Festival and Arnolfini present Between home and here, a series of creative workshops for refugees and asylum seekers exploring identity, culture and expression through writing, photography and crafting. Developed in dialogue with Mounira Al Solh’s exhibition A land as big as her skin and in anticipation of the 2026 Bristol Refugee Festival, the workshops invite participants to reflect on how they make, carry, adapt and express their culture, and how this can take shape through art.

Across eight workshops, participants will use crafting, writing and photography as mediums through which to explore the things that shape us - tradition, language, history, community, ideas - and how these become expressions of culture. The workshops are a space to explore one’s heritage and communicate through art what culture means to you - and what gets in the way. Participants will then be invited to share their work in a digital exhibition that will be showcased throughout the 2026 Bristol Refugee Festival in June.

Between home and here takes place weekly from 22 April to 29 May, 11am - 1pm, at Arnolfini on Wednesdays and Fridays, and will be facilitated by Bristol City Poet Sukina Noor, multidisciplinary artist and educator Amak Mahmoodian and material arts practitioner Sherien Elsheikh. Please check the dates carefully for the sessions you would like to attend.

Workshop Dates:

Wednesday 22 April - Writing with Sukina Noor

Wednesday 29 April - Writing with Sukina Noor

Friday 1 May - Crafting with Sherien Elsheikh

Wednesday 6 May - Photography with Amak Mahmoodian

Wednesday 13 May - Writing with Sukina Noor

Wednesday 20 May - Photography with Amak Mahmoodian

Wednesday 27 May - Photography with Amak Mahmoodian

Friday 29 May - Crafting with Sherien Elsheikh

The workshops are open to all refugees and asylum seekers in Bristol and are free to attend. Refreshments will be provided and bus tickets will be reimbursed for those using public transport to attend the workshop.

Between home and here is a collaboration between Bristol Refugee Festival and Arnolfini, and is made possible with funding from Bristol City Council.

Meet the Artists

Sherien Elsheikh

Sherien’s art mainly represents her African culture and identity, through focusing on details and colours, particularly yellow and red, completed through drawing and painting freehand. Traditional African culture is communicated through Sherien’s art, specifically from Sudan, with a focus on traditional clothing and accessories. Sherien uses different materials for her art, such as watercolours, oil colours, fabrics and beads. She is a member of the Bristol Refugee Artists Collective (BRAC) and founding member of the Women’s Craft Club at Arnolfini.

Amak Mahmoodian

Amak Mahmoodian is a multidisciplinary artist and educator. She began her career as a research-based photographer in Iran in 2003. Since 2010, she has been living in the UK, unable to return to Iran. She practices as a visual artist at the intersection of conceptual image-making and documentary photography, working with photographs, text, video, drawing and archives. She explores the presentation of gender, identity and displacement, working between the personal and political across platforms and formats including installation, books and videos.

Mahmoodian’s work has been shown internationally, including; Arnolfini, Bristol; Rencontres d’Arles, Arles; and Peckham 24, London. Her works are held in collections such as the Tate and the British Library in London. She has published two books, Shenasnameh (RRB- ICV Lab, 2016), and Zanjir (RRB, 2019) which was the winner of The Best Photo Text Book award at Rencontres Arles, 2020. Her work appears in key titles on photography such as Photography – A Feminist History (Tate Publishing, 2021), Photography Now: Fifty Pioneers Defining Photography for the Twenty-First Century (Octopus Publishing, 2021), and How We See: Photobooks by Women (10x10 Photobooks, 2019). She is shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2026.

Sukina Noor

Sukina Noor is a poet, playwright, educator, curator and public speaker who has toured extensively across the UK, Europe, America and Africa. She is the incumbent Bristol City Poet (2024 - 2026) and author of the poetry collection, Love and Longing: Yearning for the Face of God. A leading performer in the British Muslim creative scene and co-founder of female hip hop duo Poetic Pilgrimage, Sukina’s work has been featured on the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and elsewhere. In 2015, Al Jazeera made a documentary about her group titled Hip Hop Hijabis, and in 2017 she delivered a Tedx Talk on the healing potential of poetry. Sukina’s poetry courses empower communities internationally to use writing as a tool for dialogue, to access their authentic voice and to awaken the voice of the heart.

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