Oral History with the Refugee Community History Project

The Refugee Community History Project has collected the previously untold stories of refugees who have settled in London since 1951 in order to highlight the enormous contributions they make to the city.

This major initiative to record refugees' first hand experiences for current and future generations to explore ran from June 2004 to April 2007. Over 150 refugees from 15 different groups have taken part. This web site contains sections -- both audio and text -- of those refugees' stories.

Refugees flee to foreign countries, like the UK, because of persecution in their home country, or because of a well-founded fear of persecution. This may be because of a refugee's race, religion, nationality, social group, political opinion, or as a result of war.

The project won the 2006 Charity Award for arts, culture and heritage.

The interviews collected by the project are archived at the Museum of London and constitute an extraordinary and unrivalled collection of testimony based material on the subject of refugees in the UK, they also formed the basis of the major exhibition Belonging which ran from November 2006 to February 2007. In addition the project has produced a variety of educational resources based upon the material collected including CD ROMs, a short film collection and a mobile exhibition. These are available free of charge.