An arts charity that has been quietly providing a ‘beacon of hope’ and a lifeline for refugees and asylum seekers made to live by the Government in rural hotels on the outskirts of Bristol has launched an appeal after their funding ended.
Since 2022, when the Home Office requisitioned a number of hotels in the North Somerset countryside just south of Bristol, local residents and businesses and an arts organisation called Trigger began supporting the people being housed there.
After the initial furore when bus company Stagecoach launched an investigation into allegations that its drivers were refusing to allow the asylum seekers on board to travel into Bristol, Trigger and the local community continued to support the men, women and children being housed in the hotels, which were often not in ideal locations, isolated in the countryside.
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A ground-breaking project called Humanity Hotel was created, developing a programme of events, workshops and cultural exchanges with the refugees and asylum seekers, but the 12-month funding for the project is coming to an end and earlier this week Trigger launched an online appeal to raise funds to keep it going. Thousands of pounds has already been donated, but the organisation said it needs a bit more to meet the target.
Angie Bual, the creative director of Trigger, said each session ranged from storytelling to visual arts, to give participants the ‘tools to explore their identities, share their experiences, and discover their own voices’.
The workshops also feature collaborations with local artists, ensuring that both the refugees and the community around them are benefitting from these shared cultural experiences.
“These workshops are a precious opportunity for people to come out of their hotel. The funding that we get from local residents, and those who believe in the purpose of bringing creativity to people who are facing some of their most challenging times, is really worth it. We treasure every penny,” Angie said.
The need for the project was brought into focus by the recent violent attack on a hotel in Bristol housing people seeking asylum in the UK, and the riot that evening. Occupancy at the hotels in rural North Somerset are set to go up by 25 per cent in the coming months, and Angie said it was not an ideal place to house these people.
“The bespoke problem for the people who are living there is that they don’t get access to any of the provision that you might do if you lived in a city, so they are very much reliant on what comes into the hotel and some people have been there for a really long time,” she explained.
“Recently we saw the race riots, and there was a section of society showing hate, especially to people who are in those temporary hotels. And all of us want to show how welcoming we actually really are and how much we support them on this difficult journey that they’re still on.
“Our funding has come to an end and it’s a small amount of provision and it goes a really long way, especially for people who have been living there for a really long time.
“There’s nothing to do, there’s no transport links at all and so we’d really like to continue our music and crafting workshops and make sure they go and bring a smile to somebody’s face on a weekly basis,” she added. To find out more about the fundraiser, click here.