Nowhereisland

23003 Citizens
The Journey Embassy

Migration and hospitality

“Imagine a place on the move - rocks that travel thousands of miles. Imagine a world where people are free to move where they want – a world that extends a welcome to strangers. These two ideas connect Nowhereisland, the art project, to the archipelago of Svalbard in the High Arctic”

Arctic expedition team member, Tim Cresswell, in his Resident Thinker article

In 'Origins', we explored global interconnected issues such as climate change and economic crises which have serious implications for territories such as 'Svalbard'. In 'Nation', we learnt of the histories of land grab and colonisation and in 'Citizenship', about the 12 million people who are defined as stateless.

Nowhereisland is a migrant itself. Emerging from the melting ice of a retreating glacier, from a place which itself bears the marks of current global crises, Nowhereisland has come to represent the migrant's journey and in doing so, calls upon those in the South West of England during the London 2012 Olympics Games to consider how they might welcome a visiting island nation to their home towns.

Here we provide a range of links and ideas to explore about the migrant's experience across this website and others:

Forward Maisokwadzo is a journalist and researcher from Zimbabwe forced to seek refuge in the UK, watch Forward's Resident Thinker piece for Nowhereisland here.

Kazem Ariaiwand, originally from Teheran, moved to Longyearbyen, Svalbard in 2003 and ran the world's most northerly kebab shop and was featured in a BBC World Service interview in 2010. Listen to Kazem story as one of many foreign nationals in Svalbard.

Professor Doreen Massey explores landscapes on the move in a key essay on the changing nature of place 'Landscape as a provocation: reflections on moving moun- tains'. Download here.

The Simple Acts campaign, launched as part of Refugee Week 2009, encourages people to take part in one of 20 Simple Acts that can be carried out to welcome refugees to Britain and learn more about their experiences.

"An isolated nation cannot survive for long – culture and society is, and should always be on the move." argues Manick Govinda. Read his Resident Thinker piece here.

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Nowhereisland is a Situations project led by artist Alex Hartley, one of 12 Artist Taking the Lead projects for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad funded by Arts Council England. We also gratefully acknowledge the support of the University of the West of England, Bristol; Bloomberg; Nicky Wilson Jupiter Artland; the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Royal Norwegian Embassy and Yellowbrick Tracking.

Identity designed by Fraser Muggeridge studio and Wolfram Wiedner, website by Wolfram Wiedner.