Humbled in the Jungle: Can creativity help the refugee crisis?
In early September Andrew Missingham and his agency, Ben&Andrew, went to the Calais refugee camp to put the problem solving skills of the creative industries to use in this global crisis.
Returning humbled, the words "come back when you can do something useful" ringing in his ears, he is now all too aware that only practical help can make a difference.
And so he is planning to return in October with The Drum, to be practical, and we need the industry's help.
As the growing refugee and migrant crisis slowly took over the headlines this summer, it became clear that this was going to be one of the defining issues of our day. And so, being in the problem solving business, and with the mother of all problems before us, what are we doing trying to solve problems if this wasn’t one of them?
The more we read behind the headlines however, the less we seemed to know. What’s been striking about the media’s coverage, either side of the change in mood following the death of Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi, is that, above the migration and refugee crises, the crisis no one seems to be talking about is the crisis of imagination. The world seems to have a paralysing paucity of creative ideas on what to do to solve these huge problems. Current thinking and action are demonstrably not working.
With the sketchiest, faintest whiff of a plan in place, we booked an early Eurotunnel from Folkestone on a drizzly Wednesday in early September, then headed to ‘The Jungle’.
The camp itself runs on the flat sandy ground between a motorway and a line of (now) fenced off residential properties. We found tents, shops and cafes (where we drank chai with guys from Sudan, Afghanistan and Eritrea), but no one wanted to talk with us. Walking through ragged rows of polythene covered shacks, pre-fabricated sheds boasting hinged, glazed doors, we found a thatched round hut, part of the Jungle’s self-styled art centre run by Alpha, an artist from Mauritania. He told us why no one would talk: the last thing he or anyone else wants is people like us (‘fools’ as he put it) just coming to gawp .
Alpha told us, in no uncertain terms, what we could do if we wanted to be part of the solution. And he had some choice words for the UK: “We need help. We don’t need questions. All countries come here to help us – Germany, Belgium, Holland – they come here and bring everything to us. England? Just questions and pictures. We don’t need that.”
With winter coming Alpha told us that what people need is practical stuff, like shoes, plastic sheeting, tools and wood.
We went there hoping to find creative people. After all, these guys – and yes, it’s almost exclusively young men – have had the wherewithal to cross continents, dodging security and even bullets along the way. They’re not in Calais to scrounge, just to find some safety and star t again.
Alpha’s art centre was just a taste of the potential that’s there, waiting for us to uncover and embrace. He told us: “We are not terrorists, we are not coming here for a fight. We came here from our countries because we have problems there. Nobody wants to leave their family in Africa to come here to this fucking bullshit. If we didn’t have problems, trust me, we would not be here. We respect ourselves and have too much dignity.”
So, now we know, we’re going back with The Drum in October, but we need the industry’ s help. We’re going to take the things that Alpha, and others we met in ‘ The Jungle’, need.
Our plan is to work with two of the resident charities, Salam and L’auberge des Migrants, to build a space. The building will be made together with people there, using the equipment and tools we bring. Our hope is that, by returning with practical help, we’ll generate the trust needed to start a dialogue, and leave a space that can be a hub for creative activity and conversations in the future – a place that could unlock stories, insights and new solutions that others, in less creative pursuits than yours and ours, might have missed.
But we need your help , too. If you’ve got a truck you can lend us, if you’ve got skills you can spare, get in touch (projects@benandandrew.com). Maybe you’re an event producer and have set designers and carpenters. Maybe you’ve got a workshop full of tools you’d want to donate. Maybe you’re an ad agency with a cupboard full of nearly-new wellington boots left from your trekking offsite last year.
Whatever, use your imagination and all of the resources you can access. We hope that by going back and being practical we’ll demonstrate that there are people here in the UK who are interested in finding creativity wherever it may reside and unlocking its potential to create huge and lasting change.
This was first published in The Drum's 30 September issue.
Photography: Dominique Daniel