Kushinga

Kushinga Gardens

The Kushinga Gardens is a small piece of land loaned by Bournville Trust in Selly Oak Birmingham, and cultivated by a group of asylum seekers and refugees. They prepared an exhibition for Refugee Week 2017.

The project engages about 20 people. Most of the participants have experienced serious trauma, escaping violent situations in their home countries. Issues of identity are sensitive as for many their cases are in process by the UK Home Office. This can take two weeks or years depending on seemingly arbitrary criteria. Their situation changes slowly and then dramatically. Most are subject to dislocation, and extreme stress as well as a loss of professional status. Some do not want to show their faces, so there is an emphasis on hands, their hands tending the soil, weeding, digging.

The chance to be outside, socialize, actively engaging with growing vegetables, fruits and herbs is immensely therapeutic and gives a seasonal cycle against the backdrop of an imposed fragility.

The group have assembled images which reflect their experience of the gardens but also words and phrases that capture how they feel. These are in sharp contrast to the images and project their reality.

These are vivid people, who are part of the largest movement of displaced people since the II World War. Despite media propaganda, their stories are about a desire for safety and peace for themselves and their loved ones. They are a microcosm of a much greater global human tragedy.