Hundreds of refugee and asylum-seeking women across the world are turning their life stories into artwork for a short film directed by an award-winning Birmingham artist. The Migration Blanket: Climate Solidarity – released to mark International Women’s Month 2022 – tells the story of how climate change is destroying women’s lives, causing early marriage, preventing access to education, causing hunger and leading to violence against women.
From Sierra Leone to Small Heath, the 25-minute film features stories from women and girls who have fled danger from around the world. The film also pays tribute to leading climate activists Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate. Salma Zulfiqar, the founder of the ARTConnects social enterprise and a migrant rights activist, put the film together to give a voice to refugee women around the world – some in Birmingham.
The drawings for the film were created in ARTconnects workshops led by Salma. The artist collected the artwork during sessions from her Small Heath home, where she gave mental health and women’s rights advice. Speaking of her first award-winning film – The Migration Blanket – she said: “I created this film with refugee and migrant girls and women in Birmingham and around the world as many are suffering in silence.”
The project – which was inspired by Salma’s migrant mother, Bano, who died from covid in 2021 – empowered the women involved to take a stand against the climate emergency and call out how it was disproportionately impacting their lives globally.
“The film gives vulnerable refugee and marginalised women a voice, empowers them with knowledge on climate change and encourages them to take action, as well as improving their mental health,” Salma said. “This film is a call to ensure women’s rights are protected as a key element in climate action and any policy making,” she added.
The project highlights the shared experience of women in the face of climate change.
I’ve witnessed women in Bangladesh who’ve been widowed, left destitute and can’t fend for themselves due to cyclones caused by climate change,” Salma said. “Women in Kenya who’ve lost their cattle and farmland destroyed by drought and were forced to move, live rough on wasteland and become vulnerable to violence, including rape.”
Shofika, a Rohingya refugee, is one young woman who shared her story and art for the project. She said: “Our house was destroyed and we couldn’t go to school when the floods came. Climate change destroyed our agricultural land.”
Molika, a Bangladeshi student in Birmingham, shares Shofika’s pain in seeing her beloved village swept up in harsh rains and violent floods. She said: “Flooding caused by the heavy rains is stopping girls from going to school. Girls face many problems at home when the parents can’t earn money from their land due to drought or heavy rain. In Bangladesh, this is happening in the village I came from and it’s making life hard for women.”
The ARTConnects workshops are supported by MAC Birmingham and support refugees and asylum seekers. The film is a sequel to the first award-winning film, which won Best Animated Short at the Berlin Independent Film Festival.
Andy Street, the Mayor of the West Midlands, said: “This is a powerful film which raises awareness of the urgent action we all need to take together to tackle the climate emergency and help make a positive difference to the lives of some of our sadly isolated and marginalised women in the West Midlands and right across the Commonwealth.”
The film will be shown at the Commonwealth Games 2022 and during the Venice Biennale, from April to November 2022, with other venues across Europe and the US too.
Source: www.birminghammail.co.uk
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