Chris Afuakwah, Storytelling Officer from Scottish Refugee Council reflects on the success of the empowering Preserving Stories of LGBTQ+ refugees in Scotland for future generations event that took place on the 20 June 2024:

“We were always here. We were always everywhere.

On World Refugee Day 2024, Scottish Refugee Council joined forces with Our Story Scotland and Scottish Council on Archives, alongside LGBT Unity and Africa Global LGBT Project, to deliver a workshop supporting LGBT+ people who have fled their homes to preserve their stories in Scotland’s local archives.

We were delighted to welcome around 20 participants from the LGBTQI+ community, from as far apart as West Africa, South Asia and the Middle East, who had found themselves seeking sanctuary in Scotland after fleeing their homes.

We were also pleased to be joined by local Scottish Greens councillors Anthony Carroll and Seonad Hoy, and thank them, alongside Equalities Minister Kaukab Stewart, for their support of the event.

After introductions from Audrey at Scottish Council on Archives, and myself from Scottish Refugee Council/Refugee Festival Scotland, Dom from Our Story Scotland took the reins and led the group through a series of storytelling sessions.

Participants were encouraged to read excerpts of other people’s “coming in” stories – stories of people finding their community and finding their voice. This broke the ice and empowered people to begin to open up about their own stories, while not having to share anything that they didn’t feel comfortable sharing.

We then moved onto Queering the Map – taking three maps (the world, Scotland and Glasgow) and encouraging participants to share significant locations to them and their lives. People shared everything from “where I fled from” to “where I met my first partner”, to “where I felt safe” and “where I first marched in Pride”.

By this point everyone was warmed up, chatting and sharing their experiences. We brought everyone into a seated circle and explained the final exercise – a group oral history interview. Dom ran through the consent form and everybody signed before the discussion began – a discussion which lasted well over 90 minutes and took us everywhere from how to safely tell LGBT+ stories, to calling out hostile asylum policies, to the “evil forests” of Nigeria, to how much Scotland’s support has meant to people, to how we can best speak out for those who are in trouble back home. There was debate, differing views, agreements, challenging questions. The discussion took us to the end of the day – and after hugs all round, and lots of photographs, the workshop came to a close.

I’ve written a lot in my time working with communities who have sought refuge here about LGBT+ issues and rights, so I found it particularly special to bring people together for this workshop, many who have only recently arrived in Scotland and are still finding their feet, alongside others who have been here for many years. It was a really empowering and heart-warming day, hearing about the positive impact of support groups, workshops and events; and how much more support is available now (in Glasgow at least) than in the past. However, the challenges people face – both here in relative safety and those suffering across the world – were never far from our minds, with lots of discussion and debate about what individuals and groups can do to keep the rights of LGBT+ people across the world moving forward, while maintaining hard-fought freedom and safety.

And that’s where this workshop felt particularly poignant. At a time when refugee rights, trans rights and queer rights generally feel like they are teetering on a cliff-edge, to varying degrees, it was so important to take a moment to document people’s stories for future generations. To remind the historians of 20/50/100 years time, to remind the policymakers in people’s home countries and here in the UK who are so against us – that we have always been here, and we have always been everywhere, and we’re not going anywhere. Queerness, like migration, is a fact of life.”

Everyone at Scottish Refugee Council, OurStory Scotland and Scottish Council on Archives would like to thank all of the participants and attendees who came to this wonderful event. Keep up to date with the project or get in touch via our website.