A MANUAL FOR REFUGEE SERVICE WORKERS AND REFUGEE ARTISTS

1. INTRODUCTION

A. Why Involve Resettlement Agencies?

This manual is built on a simple premise: Early recognition by resettlement agency workers, church sponsors, service providers and others of the creative talents and the cultural heritage of refugees will have a very positive impact on the resettlement process. We believe that arts and culture does play an important role in refugee resettlement, and that attention to this area will benefit the individual refugee, the family, and the refugee community through:

• Increased self-esteem and confidence
• Strengthened community development
• Hastened employment and self-sufficiency

Refugee voluntary agencies and refugee service providers are well aware of the trauma of immigration. Refugees come from backgrounds of conflict—wars, political turmoil and religious persecution. Newcomers to the U.S. experience a powerful sense of dislocation. Many have lost friends and family members, their homes, their professions, and other important parts of their lives. After arriving in the United States, they are expected to “become Americans” within the initial period of resettlement, to adapt swiftly to their new environment, and to quickly find a job. This stress often results in feelings of low self-esteem, depression, and even despair. How can service providers address an individual's self-esteem, self-worth, and self-confidence—the intangible yet crucial components to a person's well-being and ultimately successful resettlement? We propose a focus on the creative talents and cultural resources of refugees as a valid strategy towards reaching this goal.

Many refugees have had to stop creating their art while wars and political problems disrupted their lives. They have put aside their musical instruments, their paint brushes, their colorful yarn waiting for a calmer time to become inspired again. Others have sung, danced, or created finely crafted handmade objects even while warfare surrounded them. Some refugees have even developed new creative talents to help express themselves throughout their ordeals. Here in the United States, refugees often want to return to a “normal” way of life, to create their various art forms or to organize and participate in celebrations. Their cultural traditions, especially their traditional arts, provide a logical format for doing this.

“What people must understand is that this art is not just decoration, it forms and shapes the human being. If you can come from a country where children are starving to death, and then you come to this country which is so rich, you simply cannot explain why children are shooting each other. The reason must be that they don't have their culture. Your culture makes you think like a human being.” — Tesfaye Tessema, Ethiopian Traditional Artist (Folk Arts in the Classroom).

In its many forms and manifestations, artistic expression can actually benefit refugees in a number of ways by addressing problems that refugees constantly encounter, such as those dealing with mental health, self-esteem, family stability, community building, and integration into American society. Many problems and conflicts exist for refugees in this country— depression, unemployment or unsatisfactory employment, being viewed as “different” because of religious beliefs, language, or customs. Participation in the arts, as artist or audience, is a way for refugees to maintain their sense of self, their cultural identity, and to pass on their heritage. Involvement in the arts ultimately leads to stronger feelings of self-esteem for the individual, draws family members together, affects community formation, and can actively contribute to American society as a whole.

Purpose and Use of the Manual

The purpose of this manual is to provide guidance and practical information to refugee service providers and others in order to help them identify refugees with artistic or traditional skills and talents, and then direct them to the proper resources. Ultimately, refugee service providers will help refugees use their artistic and traditional knowledge in a number of ways: 1) to directly apply their artistic skills; 2) to transfer artistic skills to a new yet related employment situation; 3) to maintain and pass on their cultural heritage; or 4) to create small business enterprises. Many organizations that serve refugees also serve newly arriving immigrants. This manual will be a very useful tool in serving immigrants with creative skills as well. We have included a brief section in this manual for refugees themselves so they can do a self-assessment and see what steps can be taken to help make some connections to resources here in the United States.

For the sake of brevity, the manual uses the term refugee artist rather broadly to include refugees with creative and artistic skills, whether learned formally or informally. While we know that there are many types of artists in the different refugee communities who deserve attention, recognition, and assistance, this manual is geared towards traditional artists, people who have learned their arts, crafts, music, or dance from family or community members. Other artists will also benefit from this information.

Although we do provide you with examples and definitions of traditional arts and fine arts, for the purposes of this manual, we are not asking refugee service providers to distinguish between a fine artist, a traditional artist, a skilled craft person, or artisan. Rather, we hope this manual can be a viable tool to give a refugee worker or volunteer a little knowledge and confidence to assist a few more refugees down the road to greater self-esteem and self-sufficiency. The manual’s authors and many collaborators hope that the ideas, suggestions, and resources we have provided will strengthen the focus on refugee arts and cultural heritage in the resettlement process.

In Section 2, Arts in Resettlement, we divide the resettlement process into two stages: the initial stage which includes the initial resettlement and the transition period which follows the first six months or so of resettlement and continues for the period that an agency remains active with the refugee. However, each refugee artist will present different issues that may or may not fit into any specified time frame or sequence of events.

The manual provides relevant arts-related information as well as questions to ask in each stage of resettlement (especially at intake and during needs assessment interviews). The manual provides refugee services workers with practical information and ideas, and directs the worker and the refugee to the appropriate resources.

Obviously, this manual can be very useful in working with refugees who have been in this country for many years. The focus of this project was to offer practical assistance at the initial stages of resettlement when refugees are in close connection with a number of supporting organizations and to assist resettlement agencies and service providers incorporate arts and culture as an important component of their resettlement planning.

Each section of manual can be used individually. For that reason, some information will appear in more than one section. Cross-references are provided to help you locate relevant information in other sections.

The last part of this manual is addressed to refugee artists, in particular. This section, in conjunction with the rest of the manual, should provide refugee artists with strategies for becoming connected to traditional arts networks, to other important resources, and to ways in which to document their art for future funding ventures. When necessary, parts or all of this section should be translated either verbally or in written form by a caseworker or another individual proficient in the refugee's language.

This manual does not try to describe or give examples of the arts or traditions of specific groups of refugees. The information contained in this manual is generic and designed to be useful for any ethnic, national or cultural group arriving in this country. Information on art and cultural traditions for specific groups can be obtained at various local or state art organizations, especially those with folklorists on staff. ICP has New Arrival Profiles available on Kurdish and Somali refugees and these profiles do contain art and cultural information specific to those groups.