20 Oct 2018 | Portable Studio: working with refugees on the France-UK border

In the morning Bobby Lloyd will introduce Art Refuge UK’s project with refugees on the France-UK border at Calais. She will focus on the use of different art media which the team of art therapists, many of whom are also practicing visual artists, have introduced into the work to adapt to the changing physical spaces, weather, politics, cultural shifts. This includes the use of postcards, maps, miniature brick-building, plasticine and cyanotype. Attentiveness to the materials contributes to a response that is nuanced, interpersonal and symbiotic in a context in which the emergent themes are related to dehumanization, disorientation, and displacement.

Underpinning this work is the concept of Portable Studio, developed with Debra Kalmanowitz in the 1990s in response to their work in the former Yugoslavia under Art Therapy Initiative (ATI). Bobby will invite the group to examine this concept in relation to the work in Calais and relate it back to their own practice. This will be an active seminar space in which the group will be invited to join in and contribute ideas and reflections.

In the afternoon, Bobby will lead an experiential art-making workshop, in response to themes emerging from the morning’s session.

Facilitator:
Bobby Lloyd is a visual artist, HCPC registered art therapist, clinical supervisor, lecturer and writer. Since the early 1990’s she has worked as an art therapist in CAMHS, inner London schools, and community settings both in the UK and internationally, with a particular interest in working with groups. She has developed a specialist focus on refugees, displacement, human rights and social change. A trustee of Art Refuge UK for 8 years, she became its first CEO in 2016, leading its art therapist-led project in northern France and its development as a lead UK charity in the field of art therapy and refugees. As an artist she co-led the drawing shed from 2010 – Spring 2018. She has undertaken a number of public art commissions, and exhibits regularly in the UK and internationally.

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