Identity Over Time: Digital Exhibition Launch

For Refugee Week 2022, Open University students, staff and external guests were invited to three events being held in celebration of the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary. The series of events were part of our Open University work towards becoming a University of Sanctuary, and ensuring that we create a culture of welcome and support for students and staff affected by forced displacement and migration.

This session presents a digital photographic exhibition of works by amateur and professional Swansea photographers. It explores how, through a series of photography workshops organised by the Open University’s Covid Chronicles from the Margins project and the Iberian Latin American Association during the pandemic, Spanish speakers from Swansea came together to explore their pasts, presents and hopes for the future in visual genres. The group of photographers consisted of exiles from Chile in the 1970s through to today’s refugees from Venezuela and El Salvador in collaboration with Spanish speaking Swansea locals.

The workshops were led by the renowned photographer Humberto Gatica Leyton, Andrea Ibarra Abreu, a visual artist and undergraduate at Trinity St David University, Charly Ibarra Abreu, a digital artist and media studies student at Swansea University and Carlos Ibarra Rivadeneira, educationalist and refugee support worker. They will lead the session alongside Patricia Rodríguez-Martínez Jones who leads the Iberian and Latin American Association in Wales (ILA).

Identity Over Time Digital Exhibition

Sanctuary at The Open University

Sanctuary Scholarships at The Open University