This spring and summer I’ve been working alongside a team of artists to engage with people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds and help them respond to our Shropshire heritage and landscape through artworks, words, sounds and video. Our project, funded by the Heritage Lottery, is called Hey! Earthlings! More about it on the Participate website.

From 16 – 25 June there will be an exhibition, ‘The Cabinet of Curiosity’, in Oswestry Library, where the artworks created by different groups of refugees and migrant people will be on view. Entry is free, everyone is welcome, and the Library is open Mon-Fri 9.30-17.00, and Sat 9.30-16.00. The exhibition coincides with global Refugee Week, which celebrates the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary.

These artworks have been created by three different groups of people who visited Old Oswestry Hillfort this spring alongside artists Andrew Howe and Jill Impey, community co-ordinators Anna Martin and Marina Churm, evaluator Cerin Mills, and myself. Together we climbed the hillfort, talked about its history and archaeology, and explored the ramparts. On Saturday, Misha aged 5, found a frog. With the groups we experienced the last of the bluebells, the surging bracken, exchanged stories, poems and folklore – and even songs.

Sometimes the experience over these last weeks has been very moving. On the very top of the hillfort, we talked with the refugees about how 3000 years ago the Celtic peoples used these same long views to observe the landscape of home.  Then we identified the compass direction of each person’s country of origin. And then, quite spontaneously, everyone began to wave – to Kiev – to Istanbul – to Sierra Leone – to Afghanistan… There were tears, and hugs.

Visitors to the Exhibition in the Library will find ‘The Cabinet of Curiosity’ – an exploratory, eccentric cupboard created from recycled furniture. Inside its multiple small doors and drawers will be photographs and drawings, short films on screens, poems, objects and stories. There will be audio recordings that can be listened to on headphones. You are invited to open the Cabinet’s doors and explore!