Challenging Stereotypes, Reclaiming Public Spaces
Sharing real-life stories of queer migration to help challenge stereotypes and create safer public spaces.
Name of project: ‘Anamesa/Ndërmjet’ – In Between
The challenge
In the early 2000s, the Athens neighbourhood Agios Panteleimonas was the focus of attention from the Greek far-right party, Golden Dawn. People from different backgrounds and identities used to be attacked on the streets, but today this has changed and the Feminist Autonomous Centre’s Feminist Library is a key actor in reclaiming public space for all.
The initiative
The Feminist Library is working with MiQ and the local community to challenge stereotypes by designing a programme of oral histories and visual narration through a series of workshops and training.
The project is called ‘Anamesa/Ndërmjet’, which in Greek and Albanian means ‘In-Between’: the community is involved in participatory research methods in order to create narratives about migration in Greece involving the community of migrants itself. Key to the project is giving local people the skills to carry out the project themselves.
In particular, the team is working with a group of 20 second generation queer migrants in order to retell a story of migration and the multiple borders that face people during their daily lives. The goal is to create different representation in order to counter fake news about these communities.
What’s next?
Through acts of reclaiming public space, the challenge team is also creating safe spaces for exchange and putting the public square at the heart of a new public life. In the process, they hope to make public spaces safer for women, children and LGBTQI+ people – particularly those from minority and racialised groups.
The team is creating a book including oral histories together with portraits and images of participants that will tell the story of queer migration. The challenge team also wants to organise talks, conferences, and an exhibition around the topic of decolonising queer aesthetics, as this emerges as one of the key themes of the book.
They are in the process of raising funds to create a documentary that brings together participants and is centred around issues of queer migration in Europe.
Relevant links
Social media
FB: fac_research
Twitter: fac_research
Instagram: fac_research
Contact
info@feministresearch.org (for the Feminist Library)
miqitalb@gmail.com (for the community group)
