UNESCO RIELA: The sounds of integration

This episode is a recording of a presentation by Dr Maria Grazia Imperiale, Dr Giovanna Fassetta, Dr Sahar Alshobaki and Damian Ross, shared with us at the online UNESCO RIELA Spring School: The Arts of Integrating 2025. The presentation highlights the LINEs4Palestine projects, launched in March 2024, to reduce isolation and support Palestinian students, especially in Gaza. Initially, English and...

A mini poem created at the UNESCO RIELA Spring School: The Arts of Integrating, in the workshop The Story of the Travelling Plate, led by Dilara Özel and Erdem Avşar.

In this episode, we explore the story, challenges, and outcomes of the VERIS project — VERIS – Voices of Palmyra: Engaging in Tangible Memorial Heritage in Social Innovation for Refugee Inclusion — through a conversation with Patrick M. Michel, Oana Șerban, and Brittnee Leysen. Together, they reflect on the collaborative process behind VERIS, a CIVIS Open Lab, the inclusion of Syrian refugees in p...

Can singing and dancing serve as non-violent responses to oppression? The Estonian song and dance festivals played a crucial role in the Singing Revolution, a series of peaceful mass protests that helped the Estonian people regain their freedom in 1991. Based on my experience as a singer and dancer in this year’s festival, I will provide an insider’s perspective on how these performances allow con...

In this podcast series, Dr Mukuka Kasonde and Dr Brice Catherin continue their exploration of the concept of decolonial love which they first engaged with as an art exhibition in 2025. In conversation with guests, they critically reflect on how to imagine and enact forms of love that unsettle colonial hierarchies and open space for transformation. In episode 3, Dr Tawona Sithole highlights how the...

In this podcast series, Dr Mukuka Kasonde and Dr Brice Catherin continue their exploration of the concept of decolonial love which they first engaged with as an art exhibition in 2025. In conversation with guests, they critically reflect on how to imagine and enact forms of love that unsettle colonial hierarchies and open space for transformation. In episode 2, Prof. Alison Phipps engages with lov...

In this podcast series, Dr Mukuka Kasonde and Dr Brice Catherin continue their exploration of the concept of decolonial love which they first engaged with as an art exhibition in 2025. In conversation with guests, they critically reflect on how to imagine and enact forms of love that unsettle colonial hierarchies and open space for transformation. In episode 1, Prof. Caroline Lenette takes inspira...

This episode was recorded at the online UNESCO RIELA Spring School: The Arts of Integrating 2025. We Care delves into the intimate world of elderly care in Colombia, revealing how these tender moments become powerful rituals that weave collective memory and nurture peace within communities. In Colombian families, caring for elders creates profound bonds that naturally transmit values and tradition...

This episode is a recording of a presentation by Rezvan Sayyad, who presented a talk with this title at the 2025 online UNESCO RIELA Spring School: The Arts of Integrating. Rezvan is researching how rap music in Iran has become a contested space for representation, identity and resistance. For the full show notes, including the biography of the speaker, please visit bit.ly/thesoundsofintegration

In this episode, recorded at the online UNESCO RIELA Spring School: The Arts of Integrating, we will hear from Prof Dr Bilgin Ayata, project leader of the research project Elastic Borders: Rethinking the Borders of the 21st Century. This project, generously funded by the NOMIS foundation, proposes a new conceptualization of the border building on the concept of elasticity in physics. Thinking of b...

In this episode, recorded at the online UNESCO RIELA Spring School 2025, Anna Burgin shares her research into refugee resettlement in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Abstract: Refugee resettlement, while offering refuge, is also what Pratt (1991) calls a “contact zone”, a space of contestation and unequal power dynamics. In Aotearoa New Zealand, resettlement is also dominated by the settler colonial govern...

This episode, recorded at the UNESCO RIELA Spring School 2025, is a discussion between Dr. Ray Di Marco Campbell, Dr. Haley Sneed, Jinming Liu and Gabriel, in which they explore contemporary and idealised community initiatives that take account of differences in residency status, recourse to public funds, employment opportunities, and access to quality nutrition in order to co-creative a peaceful...

Timothy Peacock and Rebecca Sutton talk about peacegaming and their work at the Games and Gaming Lab at the University of Glasgow. This talk was inspired by their workshop at the UNESCO RIELA Spring School: The Arts of Integrating (May Peace Prevail), which took place in Glasgow in May 2025.

In this episode, Julie Ward, former MEP with a background in activism, talks about the Durham-based 'No To Hassockfield' campaign. Hassockfield is the site of an Immigration Removal Centre and the campaign was fighting for its closure, uses creative arts as a powerful tool to raise awareness of the harms caused by asylum detention and the need to provide community alternatives, whilst also providi...

This episode is a recording of the opening keynote address Prof David Gramling delivered at the UNESCO RIELA Spring School: The Arts of Integrating 2025, in Glasgow, Scotland. Here is the abstract: Good News Bernice Johnson Reagon once sang for us a corrective teaching, along the lines that: “It’s ‘good news’ when you reject things as they are. […] And they don’t say ‘it’s good times’, they say ‘i...

In this episode, Elder in Residence Mike Gonzalez interviews Mohammad Alkhatib and Daniel Calvert about teaching languages, inclusion, second language acquisition, ESOL, linguistic landscapes and translanguaging pedagogy. Please visit our website for the shownotes, including their biographies: https://bit.ly/thesoundsofintegration

In this little bonus clip, you'll hear from a number of participants about their experiences at the UNESCO RIELA Spring School: The Arts of Integrating. The music is by Soloway Choir, a choir made up of Ukrainian women, currently living in Glasgow.

In this episode, Dr Tawona Sitholé speaks with academic and author Jo Beall (FAcSS) about her debut novel, Meadowlands Dawn, set in apartheid South Africa during the 1980s. Their conversation explores Jo’s personal connection to the story, how she switched from academic to creative writing, and the important distinction between love and infatuation. For the full show notes, including biographies o...

A wee bonus message for you all. Full show notes, including the names of the speakers and the languages: bit.ly/thesoundsofintegration

This week we have an episode in a different language for you. Listen to TafBob Mutumbi, telling us a story in Shona, one of the languages spoken in Zimbabwe by around 9 million people. Tafadzwa Bob Mutumbi is an actor, Director and Theatre maker from Harare, Zimbabwe. TafBob strives to create, perform and direct provocative ritual theatre pieces that are innovative and functional. He is committed...

In this second episode about the Drawing Together project, Alison Phipps interviews Ravi Kohli, Kate MacKinnon, Sharon McGregor and Christine Uwase about their experiences working on the project. Please refer to part 1 for the full background of the project. For the show notes, including biographies of the speakers and links to the project, please visit: bit.ly/thesoundsofintegration. Rough timing...

In this episode, Alison Phipps interviews Ravi Kohli, Sharon McGregor and Christine Uwase about the Drawing Together project, a project that looked at the relational wellbeing in the lives of young refugees in Scotland, Finland and Norway. For the full show notes, including biographies of the speakers and links to the project, please visit: bit.ly/thesoundsofintegration. Rough timings of this epis...

This episode is a collection of 4 poems, written by the 4 keynote listeners Erdem Avşar, Adrianne Kalfopoulou, Herbert Cea and Heidi Perez-Cordero, who each summarised a day of the UNESCO RIELA Spring School: The Arts of Integrating 2024, a large conference which takes place every year in May in Glasgow. For more information about the event, please visit bit.ly/RILASpring24. For the full show note...

This episode is a recording of a session entitled 'Exploring creative, cross-cultural research collaborations: A case study of an MSF run thalassemia clinic in Lebanon', which was meant to take place at the UNESCO RIELA Spring School 2023, but which was cancelled because of the situation in Lebanon at the time. Dr Molly Gilmour has now kindly shared the research that she conducted, together with h...

In this episode, UNESCO RIELA PhD researcher Pinar Aksu discusses her workshop at the RIELA Spring School: The Arts of Integrating 2024 (Word Springs). Pinar's PhD research looks at the connection between art and law in the context of migration and how arts practices can be part of creating social change, as well as access to justice within the immigration system. Her workshop explored the languag...