The University of Ottawa Refugee Hub is inviting contributions for an online exhibit on refugee sponsorship, featuring artefacts and artistic works relating to the theme, “The Journey”.

Who is invited to contribute?
If you have arrived in a new country through refugee sponsorship, whether recently or long ago, or if you have been a sponsor, we invite you to contribute to this special online exhibit. We also welcome joint submissions from sponsors and sponsored newcomers.

Types of Contributions:

We invite you to share an ‘artefact’ that illustrates some aspect of your journey through sponsorship. This may be a photo, drawing, painting, video, audio file, or any other representation that can be featured online. Short written works, such as a poem, are also invited.

Submissions may be works of art (that is, a piece that is designed to be experienced as art), or they may depict an everyday item that has significance to you.

Each submission should be accompanied by a short description or abstract (less than 300 words) that explains its significance to you and how it connects to your sponsorship journey.

We particularly appreciate the contributions of people with lived experience of sponsorship and displacement. As such, we will be offering a $50 honorarium to 30 contributors with this experience.

Theme: “The Journey”

Contributors are invited to bring their own experience and interpretation to the theme of the exhibit. A contribution may relate to the physical journey of arriving in a new country through sponsorship, or some other aspect of your experience of sponsorship – reflecting your unique ‘journey’ as a sponsor or sponsored newcomer.

Deadline for Submissions: 12 December 2021

Please submit your artefact together with a short description or abstract (less than 300 words) by Sunday, 12 December 2021 by email to Eliza Bateman, Senior Research Analyst at the University of Ottawa Refugee Hub: eliza.bateman@refugeehub.ca.

The Exhibit:

Artefacts will be featured in a dedicated online exhibit space.

Our online exhibition will be launched in connection with the Capstone Symposium of the Research Colloquium on Refugee Sponsorship in in early February 2022 and will remain online for several weeks after the symposium as a limited online exhibition.

About the Research Colloquium on Refugee Sponsorship:

Over the course of 2021, the Research Colloquium on Refugee Sponsorship is bringing together leading scholars and experts to examine key questions about the study and practice of community-based refugee sponsorship. Sponsorship has a 40+ year history in Canada and is being adopted by an increasing number of countries in Europe and around the world. As new programs and models develop, it is an important moment to take stock of existing knowledge, critically re-examine assumptions, and chart a forward-looking agenda for knowledge creation and critical inquiry.

The Colloquium is coordinated by the University of Ottawa Refugee Hub, with support from the Alex Trebek Forum for Dialogue and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.