Conversations from Calais
Once a week, I sit down in front of my laptop and start the process of reading, editing and formatting conversations volunteers have had with migrants in Calais and have submitted through our website to be included in this project.
Conversations From Calais is a project that aims to re-humanise those affected by the refugee crisis by using public space to share conversations volunteers have had with migrants met in Calais. It is a way of bearing witness to the thousands of displaced people stuck in Calais and trying to reach the UK, whose voices are so often silenced or ignored. This ever-growing collection of conversations focuses on capturing the diversity of experiences and avoids creating stereotypes of refugees as villains, heroic figures or hopeless victims. By pasting these posters on walls all around the world, we are taking over public space, commemorating these voices and inspiring social change.
We have now collected more than 200 conversations and the process of going through them is not usually cheerful, it’s difficult and harrowing to read about the horrific experiences that many displaced people have gone through to get to northern France. However, some of the conversations are banal, funny, relatable and heart-warming. Conversation 188 is one of them and it made me smile when I first read it and imagined how this small encounter might have happened. This story gave me hope about this scary situation that seems to be getting worse and worse. This promise reminded me of the empathy and goodness of people. This smile reminded me there can be a reason to be cheerful even in the hardest and most unexpected of situations. I hope it does this to all the other people who read it too, either when reading it here, scrolling on their phone (@conversationsfromcalais) or walking past it on the street.
Mathilda Della Torre