Imagining Spaces of Care: A Story-Led Workshop of Displacement, Space, and Hope [sign-up required]
Date & Time
Jun 16, 2026 |
9.00
- 12.30
Location
CRX 309
Participants
Eiman Elbanhawy, University of Portsmouth (United Kingdom)
This training introduces a story-led approach to exploring displacement, asylum, and belonging through collective imagination rather than formal design. It begins with a short talk on war zones, internal displacement, and the lived challenges faced by people forced to flee their homelands.
Participants will then work individually or in small groups—ideally with others from similar geographic or cultural contexts—to create narratives, keywords, and shared stories imagining a supportive space located in their homeland.
This speculative space functions as a place of compassion, community, choice, and hope for asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants, offering temporary support and care upon displacement.
- Contextual Framing Presentation
A short presentation introducing conflict-affected contexts, war zones, and internal displacement, with a focus on the lived realities of people forced to flee their homelands. The session highlights everyday struggles, loss of place, and adaptive practices, and sets out the ethical framing of the workshop through three guiding themes: compassion, community, and
choice, leading towards imaginaries of hope. - Story-Led Small-Group Work: Personas and Narratives
Participants work in small groups, ideally with others from similar geographic or cultural contexts. Using a selection of real stories provided at the start of the session, each group develops a persona and produces a short narrative (maximum 200 words) imagining a supportive space rooted in the persona’s homeland.
Each group will:
•identify key needs and values through keywords
•create a simple storyboard depicting a day in the persona’s life after
displacement, mapping spaces, emotions, and moments of support
•record their narrative to preserve tone, meaning, and voice - Mini-Exhibition and Collective Reflection
Groups display their outputs in a mini-exhibition. Participants circulate, engage with others’ stories, and leave written reflections. Shared themes around care, dignity, belonging, and peacebuilding are briefly synthesised.
This collective walk-through encourages peer learning, empathy, and cross- contextual dialogue, allowing shared themes around care, dignity, belonging, and peacebuilding to emerge organically.
Who can attend?
Everyone is welcomed. No design skills are required. The workshop uses storytelling as a peacebuilding method to foreground lived experience, empathy, and contextual understanding, enabling participants to reflect on how care, dignity, and belonging can be imagined and articulated across conflict-affected contexts.