I had been discussing increasing the impact of Moving Love film project with ImpactMakers producer and director, Vera Born, and during this discussion, I pitched creating a number of workshop sessions based on visionary world-building principles. Making use of these principles, I proposed a quartet of sessions, first focusing on what the community of LGBTQ+ asylumseekers wants and needs, then moving outwards to gathering insight into what the larger Dutch public thinks, before going on to inviting policymakers, lobbyists and lawmakers. The final session, which is yet to happen hopes to gather all these threads together and incorporate them into a reader which the producer (ImpactMakers) wants to make.

The issue of safety for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers and for vulnerable groups in the asylum seekers centra is one that’s also highlighted in the news. Sandro Kortekaas of LGBT Asylum Support has also been tireless in highlighting the urgency of attending to the safety of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. In March, LGBT Asylum Support sent a broadly supported petition to the Minister of Asylum and Migration highlighting the egregious fact that ten percent of queer asylum seekers dies by suicide in asylum centra.

From working with the community of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers, it’s impossible to not hear stories about the acts of violence and abuse that are regularly directed towards LGBTQ+ and in particularly to those who are openly queer. These are the facts. Vulnerable groups are regularly subject to violence and threats and it can’t continue. There is a reason why LGBTQ+ asylum seekers flee and the circumstances under which they live in the asylum centra is far from the luxurious fabulation that we see fed to those of the population. Yes, the asylum center might have once been a hotel, but is it a place of luxury when two to four people are stuffed inside a room for months on end? Is it luxury when you cannot choose what you eat? Is it luxury when you know that you are not safe because you never know where the violence or abuse will come from?

Listening in on these sessions, I also realised that for a lot of Dutch people, there is a rather vague understanding of what life is like in asylum centers. A point rightly raised by one of the participants to the second sessions, was the lack of knowledge on how to support and also where to find community–particularly if one is in a town that is predominantly right wing. This second workshop which was facilitated by my dear friend, Marielle, built around the question of belonging. What do we need to feel we belong and what are the things that make us feel a sense of belonging. It’s a universal question and a great point from which to launch into imagining and thinking around how we might create this sense of belonging.

There is a lot of support for providing safe asylum centers for LGTBQ+ and vulnerable asylum seekers. From the third session, we learned that there are asylum centers for vulnerable groups in North Westphalia in Germany and that lawmakers from The Netherlands have visited these centers. I believe that there is a will to improve accommodations and to improve safety for vulnerable groups but the law is a slow moving institution and it is rather frustrating as we bear witness to the urgency of a matter that seems to just drag on without any concrete resolution.

Nevertheless, it was hopeful to hear of initiatives and to hear of what people are doing around this matter.

On the 19th of July, the final session will be held in FramerFramed. Do drop by if you have time. As one of the politicians present so rightly said: this isn’t a right wing or left wing issue, this is a human rights issue. We all have the right to live safely. We all have the right to thrive.

Maraming salamat for reading. Blessings and peace and maraming salamat for the support.

Here’s the link to the Moving Love Sessions at FramerFramed: https://framerframed.nl/en/projecten/workshop-series-moving-love-think-tank-sessions/

(Image from Moving Love project)