Refugee Week 2025

Tune in this month as we celebrate Refugee Week with the theme “Community as a Superpower". Refugee Week is a UK-born, international arts and culture festival that honours the creativity, resilience, and contributions of refugees and people seeking sanctuary. This year’s theme sets the tone for a week-long series of collective-driven radio shows hosted by independent stations around the world.

From Monday, June 16, to Sunday, June 22, alongside six other community stations we will each dedicate a daily two-hour slot from 13:00 to 15:00 CEST to special broadcasts. Tune in for reflections on migration and belonging: a mix of interviews, storytelling, and music.

We kick off on Monday with our Refuge show, followed by Tuesday’s broadcast from Athens-based Stegi Radio. On Wednesday, Marseille’s Ola Radio takes over the airwaves, before Thursday’s slot features content from Manila Community Radio. Friday’s broadcast is brought to you by Worldwide FM, with 20ft Radio from Kyiv curating Saturday’s show. The programme rounds off on Sunday with programming from RBL.

We start the week with a two-hour show hosted by Sarj, community organiser and voice behind aequa Radio, joined by Tehran-born, Berlin-based producer RealMo. The pair explore this year’s Refugee Week theme Community as a Superpower through a blend of music, storytelling and conversation. The show features voices from Women in Exile e.V., and RealMo shares reflections on his own journey through the German asylum system, alongside his work mentoring young people navigating similar experiences.

Tuesday’s broadcast comes from Athens-based Stegi Radio. Sound artist and researcher Miia Laine shares a sonic essay on money and migration, tracing informal networks of care through remittances, women-led microfinancing circles, and bricks of cash wrapped in foil. The show closes with a mixtape curated by Lebanese composer Charif Megarbane, who selects tracks shaped by migration over the past decade—including new material from his forthcoming album Hawalat.

On Wednesday, Marseille’s Ola Radio show will feature a conversation with SOS Méditerranée France about their ongoing rescue missions in the Mediterranean. Also featured is artist and filmmaker Saodat Ismailova, who speaks on reconnecting with the musical traditions of her native Uzbekistan after years living abroad.

Thursday’s programme comes from Manila Community Radio and features Dear Earth, a UK-based musician of Filipino and Welsh heritage. Through a mix of music and reflection, he looks at how diasporic communities use sound to hold memory, identity and home in place.

On Friday, Worldwide FM teams up with the Our Heartbeats collective—a crew of DJs with lived experience of seeking asylum. Their mix celebrates global resistance, drawing on music as a tool for joy, connection and freedom. The set pushes back against narratives of victimhood, foregrounding creativity and care.

Saturday’s show, hosted by Kyiv’s 20ft Radio, is curated by artist Vitalii Nemchenko. It features two projects made during wartime in Ukraine. Blackout Tape is a compilation recorded entirely without electronic instruments during blackout conditions. The second half of the show includes a live set by electronic producer Volodymyr Gnatenko, recorded for o0series to support Kyiv Angels NGO.

The week closes on Sunday with a session from RBL Barcelona. DJs Djane Karma and Debora Raw reflect on exile, belonging and resistance, using music to process and reclaim experiences of forced migration. The show is hosted by A•BUNDAH, a platform centring diasporic and migrant voices.

Each day offers a new take on ground focus—from underground care networks to collective sound archives.

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Artwork by 8bitfaz