Tate Liverpool's Home from Home

Home from Home is an annual knowledge exchange and skills development programme for people seeking asylum and refugee status in Liverpool city region.

The programme connects local migrant communities to each other, to Tate Liverpool staff, and to the city’s cultural offer, using Tate’s art collection as a learning resource.

Each iteration runs between 8-12 weeks, once a week for four hours. Group members explore artworks from the Tate collection as a tool for self-expression and to forge connections. Weekly sessions start with a warm-up, physical and vocal exercises to get to know each other and build trust.

Each week group members explore different topics as prompts to talk about the artworks in the gallery and beyond:

• The personal – what do I bring?
• The object - what can I see?
• The subject – what is it about?
• Relating the work to a wider context (who, where, when and our own personal perspective)

ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) exercises are integrated into the programme topics and artworks on a weekly basis. Creative activities are used to stimulate ideas, build confidence in communicating diverse perspectives through and with artworks. The programme encourages playfulness, allowing our thoughts to take a different path through new experiences.

The Home from Home members are introduced to other local cultural institutions in Liverpool where they are given a guided tour by staff. This has included the Bluecoat, FACT, Liverpool Cathedral, Walker Art Gallery and Liverpool Biennial.

For the 2024 Home from Home iteration we focused on the Brickworks display at Tate Liverpool + RIBA North. The show explored the history and our relationship to the local built environment.

To facilitate the embodied experience of the Brickworks themes, the group connected to the display through hands-on clay work and by exploring the built environment through photography. What can a brick tell us about the space we live in and encounter? What feelings does it conjure? And what do we discover when we investigate materials zooming in? The workshops invited the group to respond through the medium of tactile materials and visual expression.

Home from Home members researched the artworks from the Brickworks display and identified one artwork that resonated with them. The group then presented their research by delivering a public talk responding to an artwork from the display and introduced an artwork from outside the Tate collection, bringing the two into conversation with each other.

Our aspiration is to enable group members to use art as a form of expression in their daily life, feel they can access cultural offers wherever they are, and return to the gallery to see future displays and attend public programme events. For Tate Liverpool staff, we aim to keep developing participation and engagement with the programme and its members through delivering talks, joining sessions and attending the groups’ presentations.

Through the years we have built partnerships with local charities such as: Asylum Link, British Red Cross Merseyside, Homes for Ukraine, Sahir House Mersey Care’s ‘Many Hands One Heart’, Mary Seacole House, Refugee Women Connect, and Liverpool City Council’s Our Liverpool Strategy Steering Group.

The 2024 Home from Home programme was supported by the Duchy of Lancaster Benevolent Fund Merseyside, P. H. Holt Foundation and Tate Liverpool.

Project lead

Alison Jones (Programme Manager: Community Learning Tate Liverpool) Alison.jones@tate.org.uk

Adi Lerer (Independent social practice curator and Project Manager) Adi.lerer@tate.org.uk

Programme team (through the years)

Faith Agaba (ESOL teacher)

Emma Case (Photographer)

Jenny Collins (Videographer)

Phoebe Mcsweeney (Drama Facilitator)

Brian Roberts (Photographer)

Jake Ryan (Videographer)

Roger Sinek (Photographer)

Louise Waller (Ceramicist)

Colette Whittington (Artist)

Ami Zanders (Artist)