Recently twelve African cultural groups took over the Adelaide Festival Centre stage to applause from over a thousand people. Following a similar performance by thirteen Sudanese ethnic groups last year, these newer arrivals, some settled in Adelaide less than one year, also requested their centre stage. They asked to showcase their culture - the rhythms of their chanting, the beat of their drums, the bounce of their feet adorned with bells and the colour of their costumes against glistening skin painted in ochre colours. And in May this year they, the newly arrived African communities - 150 men, women, young people and children - finalised preparations and then excited the audience once again with the energy of their cultures through the African Journey. From west to east, from Sierra Leone, Burundi, the Congo, Ghana, the Sudan, Ethiopia, and from African refugee camps to a new life in Australia they traced their journey.

The Migrant Resource Centre of South Australia has long understood the need for cultural expression by all new groups of migrants that come to this country, whatever their experiences. But for migrants with refugee backgrounds, expressing one’s cultural identity is a matter of survival, as, in most cases, that identity is the only baggage they have been able to bring intact to this country. While the basic need of a roof over their heads, food, a job, and their children’s education is critical to their long-term settlement, the need to play out and to share their creativity, their cultural richness resonates in the words of one of the Kurdish refugees who participated in an MRCSA project, Freedom Flight:

“We all need to leave a mark upon this world! If I do not write my poetry, how will I be able to communicate to others; how will they know who I am, where I have come from, what brought me to this far away country? How will my children understand me and my people’s history? I must do this because I have nothing left of who I am, my writing is the only proof that I even exist. It gives me hope!”

The MRCSA with assistance from the Australia Council for the Arts, Arts SA, numerous local government councils, the Adelaide Festival Centre, the SA School of Art, University of South Australia, private sponsorship and immense amounts of ongoing volunteer work by staff, and the communities themselves uses cultural development as an integral and critical component of its settlement program for newly arrived people of refugee background.

“In this new country I need many things and I have so many dreams and hopes! I know for me this will not happen, but I must live for my children. Food feeds my body but only music and dance can calm my spirit!”

This quote is from a woman in one of the quilting projects, but her statement is similar to those from most participants in any of the MRCSA projects organised to assist the empowerment of people who have arrived in this land, stripped of their citizenship, their country, their land, their home and for some, even their family.

The need for artistic expression, whether it be through the written word, through painting, music, song, role play or dance, is inherent in all of us. For communities whose heritage is based on communal life, the need to communicate to each other, to rejoice or to find solace through their cultural rituals, through story telling, weaving, making ceremonial costumes, painting their bodies, gathering together to beat to the drums, to dance, to sing at a wedding, a birth and other celebrations, to chant in mourning of a loved one, this need for human artistic expression is integral to their individual and collective resilience and health.
In a recent youth photographic project, Snapshots of a New Life, people explored their bicultural background by photographing and researching stories from their families and their community members, reaching out, perhaps for the first time since they arrived in this country, to learn from, and to share with their elders, to begin to see them as an important element in their lives and not just as people of another culture that have lost their relevance here, in this new country. As importantly they took pride in writing their names under their work exhibited throughout South Australia.

“I was never given the opportunity to make photographs before. I didn’t know I could do it - to talk to my mother about her experiences. It has helped me understand her and how we came here; and wow! I have my work hanging at the Festival Centre. My school, my friends, will see me differently now!”

The short message received from one of the ethnic leaders of a newly arrived community soon after the African Journey performance, sums up the integral role cultural expression plays in furthering the wellbeing of communities who have suffered torture and trauma.

“Thank you for helping members of my community to feel good about themselves. Tonight the Australian people applauded them - they were stars upon the stage. No longer did they feel like victims!”

Newly arrived people of refugee background bring many experiences, qualities and skills to this country. Many of their contributions have not been visible or utilised. Their wellbeing, their hopes and aspirations can only be realised if they are given the opportunity to share the wealth of their cultures, their own skills and experiences so as to contribute to Australia’s multicultural development.

Their greatest aspiration is to stop being a victim, to stop being a refugee. Their cultural heritage, the cultural skills which people who have suffered torture and trauma bring with them, requires only a forum from which they can launch their dreams of freedom!