Artists in Action: A Creative Community Fights for the Refugee Cause
Traveling to DJ doesn’t just bring you the incomparable feeling of playing tunes for an adoring crowd; it also exposes you to the world—both the good parts and the not-so-good parts. Geoffrey Catchpole (aka Jeff23, aka DJ Tal) and Simone Trevellian (aka Bad Girlz’ MC Sim Simmer)—one-time members of the mainly defunct British free party sound system Spiral Tribe and current members of SP23, the artist collective descended from Spiral Tribe—had their eyes opened when performing in the Italian city of Lecce in August 2015. The promoter of the party, who also works for a refugee aid association called SPRAR, alerted them to the plight of the multiplying refugee population.
This information—plus horrifying media images of migrants and refugees in Kos, Greece, and Calais, France—spurred Catchpole, Trevellian, and their colleague Wanda Wellard to take action. They formed Artists in Action, and three months later, the France-based humanitarian organization was granted official nonprofit status.
Focusing on the plights of displaced people across the globe, Artists in Action immediately kicked into gear. They got involved with the Refugee Community Kitchen at Calais’ L’Auberge des Migrants, where Trevellian is still living, cooking, crowd-funding, and overseeing logistics until the operation is able to function autonomously. They also took a supply-filled truck to Dunkerque, France, to disperse essential items and establish communal kitchens, helping with the work Refugee Community Kitchen, Médecins Sans Frontières (France’s Doctors Without Borders), and Aid Box Convoy are doing there.
“With the Refugee Community Kitchen, we’re feeding 2,000 people a day since November,” says Catchpole. “That’s all from crowd-funding and people turning up from all over. One van will be a Muslim group who are dropping off a load of stuff; 10 minutes later, an Indian will turn up in his turban and give a load more; then, a bunch of people will come from a Catholic church; and then a raver will come from England. It’s incredible what’s going on, bringing people from all sorts of communities, participating completely for the love.”
<a data-cke-saved-href=”http://artistsinaction.bandcamp.com/album/artists-in-action-compilation-part-1″ href=”http://artistsinaction.bandcamp.com/album/artists-in-action-compilation-part-1″>ARTISTS IN ACTION COMPILATION PART 1 by artists in action</a>
In addition to these in-kind donations and crowd-funding efforts, the work is made possible through benefit parties, albums, and other fundraising projects that tap into the group’s creative community. On top of two massive compilation albums already under their belts, “we’ve also got a hardcore rave compilation coming out, which is what all the youngsters are into in Europe,” explains Catchpole. “Because we’ve been on the rave scene since 1992 in France and before that in the UK, I put the word out on all our channels and called a few artists directly. Word spread and enabled us to have compilations that are very varied in style.”
<a data-cke-saved-href=”http://artistsinaction.bandcamp.com/album/artists-in-action-compilation-2″ href=”http://artistsinaction.bandcamp.com/album/artists-in-action-compilation-2″>Artists in Action Compilation 2 by Artists in Action</a>
Artists in Action’s next move is buying a mobile kitchen truck with which they can take their operation to hard-to-reach temporary camps or refugee hotspots. You can donate directly to this cause here.
Catchpole recently returned home—he currently lives near Rotterdam, Netherlands—from Calais and Dunkerque, France, where he was working at the Refugee Community Kitchen. Here, he talks about his experiences and the friendships he made.
“These shelves are starting to look worryingly empty,” said Steve Stavrinides of Refugee Community Kitchen with a concerned frown. “We urgently need supplies.”
It was one thing having a deluge of volunteers and donations over the Christmas period, where the festive spirit runs deep and the misfortune of others sharpens into focus. But with January upon us, the weather worsening and potential volunteers back at work, the future looked increasingly treacherous.
I glanced over at the Snack Shack, a 1984 kebab van that was donated to a sister charity in Calais. Just yesterday, Rufus—one of the tireless Refugee Community Kitchen chefs who works with Steve—had commented on the state of the engine and the telltale smell of burning oil emanating from the chassis. With a critical role delivering 800 hot meals a day to the Grand-Synthe camp, it began to feel that the infrastructure of the relief mission was starting to buckle.
As smoke billowed out from the van, Bastien—a fellow volunteer with Artists in Action—and I began to do some very uncomfortable math. With funds increasingly scarce, buying a replacement vehicle could cripple the food supply.
It was my last day in the camps, working with Refugee Community Kitchen and Artists in Action, two groups formed in response to the growing humanitarian disaster in Europe. I had been driving the spluttering Snack Shack van for a week, and as I reflected on the families I’d met, the children who inspired me, and the courage I’d witnessed, I gulped back the tears.
I had made a particularly strong connection with a Kurdish group of refugees who had fled perpetual conflict, and through my daily chats with them on the lunch round, I began to understand that even the concept of a homeland was fractured. The Kurds were divided across four countries in a crucible of conflict—Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey—and had been at the mercy of warring forces for over a century.
A Kurdish refugee revealed that he was a geologist by profession, and I couldn’t help but joke back to him that I was mystified why the UK hadn’t given him a visa, considering their insatiable love of oil and natural resources. It was a feeble wisecrack, to be fair, yet it rang poignantly true. Perhaps BP had their own geologists, though, and it struck me that not only were we all fighting back against the military-industrial complex in our own way, but that the DIY spirit of community ran through us all, no matter where we came from.
“My father is a colonel in the Kurdish army,” he said. “He forced me to leave our village, as he knew that I could be killed any day. I owned a BMW and two houses until they were flattened.”
This was a recurring theme. As the press paints the refugees as one step away from savages, I was genuinely astonished to discover just how successful the people around me had been in their former lives. This frail, bedraggled man showed me a picture of himself in a very stylish suit, standing in front of his flourishing porcelain factory—before it was shelled by ISIS. He then showed me another picture: the pile of rubble and broken dreams that was left behind after the assault. And as he put his phone away, I realized I hadn’t seen a photo of his wife. It didn’t take a genius to work out why.
Mohammed, the first refugee I met at the Grand-Synthe camp had no passport, no money, and no one left. I asked him why he and the other residents of the camps were so determined to get to Britain when they had passed through numerous European countries. The British press were using this to demonize the refugees as economic migrants looking for a “soft touch,” and with Germany offering greater benefits and a more open entrance policy, I felt I needed to ask directly why the UK was their destination.
In almost every case, it came down to family. Those who had relatives in other European countries, no matter how distant, had gone in search of them, while those who saw Britain and the family connections they had there as their only hope had no foundations anywhere else. It was family and the last shreds of identity that drove them toward the Channel.
On the way back from the makeshift toilets, I came across a teenager whom we had been supplying meals to daily. He was in floods of tears. Unable to communicate through the language barrier, we just hugged and shared a moment of human empathy. He was an individual with a desperate story, and there were thousands others just like him, adrift on a sea of crisis and uncertainty. The conditions are dire, the sanitation almost nonexistent, and the freezing mud rising.
The next day, as we made our deliveries, I found Mohammed crying. He was at the end of his tether.
“We can’t keep warm at night, hope is fading by the day, we’re trapped with no way forward and no way back,” he said. “I feel like my sanity is slipping away. One small thing stops me from going completely crazy: the idea that I can still share a small beer with friends.” His cough was worsening by the day.
While there were many practicing Muslims in the camp, many were persecuted Christians, and many others were simply not religious. Indeed, the reason the Grand-Synthe camp had so many Kurds in it was because they worried about ethnic tensions with other refugees in camps like Calais. The Kurds had been persecuted in their own homeland, finding themselves a minority in four different countries, and they feared they may not be fully accepted by other refugee communities.
That night, a group of young Kurds danced with us to new electronic music coming from our young Kurdish Snack Shack DJ. Ragga beats with synthesized sounds and Kurdish vocals rocked the camp, and on the dancefloor, the smiles were truly beautiful to see. The dancefloor filled with people who had lost everything—smiling, hugging, and feeling the love as their future hung in the balance. Food and clothing aside, we felt that this coming together as a community, irrespective of our backgrounds or theirs, was a testament to the human spirit.
To help fund Artists in Action’s mobile kitchen, you can donate via PayPal to [email protected].
