Refugee friendship quilt weaves new connections

A unique friendship quilt has been threaded together in a creative collaboration at a Welsh university’s Refugee Week celebrations.

Many of those who took part in the project, which was organised by the Creative Community initiative based at Aberystwyth University, have settled in Wales after fleeing conflict or persecution in their home countries, including Syria, Ukraine, Nigeria and Cameroon.

The project celebrates Wales’ diverse history and contemporary community by using innovative textile techniques and traditional Welsh quilt making to explore the Refugee Week 2025’s theme of ‘community’.

Shaping Nations

The project is supported by the Welsh Refugee Council, and later this year the completed Aberystwyth Friendship Quilt will go on public display across Wales as part of the organisation’s ‘Shaping Nations’ exhibition.

Organisers say the activity is a way of exploring how creative practice can help to build connections within and between communities and support mutual understanding and collective care.

Co-organiser Dr Katy Budge, a lecturer in International Politics at Aberystwyth University and a coordinator of the Creative Community project, said: “In a time of increasingly hostile and divisive politics, it’s more important than ever that we come together to create connections and conversations across perceived boundaries.

“Through the Creative Community project, we recognise that by exploring perspectives and insights that are often marginalised in public, policy and academic conversations – including those of people with histories of displacement and migration – we can learn so much about how we can collectively create communities that sustain us all.”

The Aberystwyth Friendship Quilt project was launched at the Celebrating Our Diverse Community event in the bandstand on Aberystwyth promenade on Saturday 21 June.

As well as contributing to the friendship quilt, visitors to the event enjoyed creative activities for children, poetry readings by Sanctuary Ambassadors Aruni McShane and Dr Tarh Martha Ako Mfortem, performances by local musicians, and the opportunity to learn Arabic and Ukrainian folk dance.

Communities

Co-organiser Dr Naji Bakti, a Lebanese author, lecturer in Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University, and coordinator of the Creative Community project said: “At our Refugee Week event in 2024, we explored the concerns, priorities and needs of refugee communities in Aberystwyth, and heard the strong desire for more opportunities to engage in collective creative practice, and to connect to our surrounding environment.

“The Friendship Quilt weaves these together through a creative celebration of community and nature, and complements the other activities we’ve delivered over the past year including embroidery, photography, woodland crafts and surfing.

“We’re looking forward to supporting service providers and policy makers in engaging in similar approaches, to ensure that community cohesion initiatives are led by the priorities of refugee communities themselves.”

A spokesperson from the Welsh Refugee Council added: “The Shaping Nations project is one that ties together arts, culture, and Welsh Heritage.

“The aim of the project is to bring together the diverse communities that live in Wales, including individuals with migration backgrounds to explore the common threads of culture and art that bind us all.  The project also celebrates the vibrant history of migration in Wales and how it has contributed to building the contemporary Welsh culture that we know and love today. Shaping Nations is the embodiment of bringing people together in a time of division.”

The Creative Community project is funded by the Welsh Refugee Council as well as Aberystwyth University’s AberCollab programme, Research Impact Fund and The Worlds We Want research hub.

The project’s coordinators, Naji Bakhti and Katy Budge, were recently recognised for their work supporting refugee communities at the Welsh Refugee Council’s Nation of Sanctuary Awards.