Refuge Worldwide launches new educational platform

We are delighted to announce Unity In The Community as the new official home for Refuge Worldwide's educational projects, mentorship programmes, talks, workshops and screenings - building on what we have developed over the last five years, and now based out of our Niemetzstrasse space in Berlin-Neukölln.

Founded earlier this year, after several months of navigating German paperwork, we are happy to share the new platform.

Since 2021, Refuge Worldwide's team has received over 3,500 applications to join our workshops, facilitated 2,500+ hour of teaching, hosted 2,000+ participants, opened 675 free DJ practice sessions, 200+ free music studio sessions, and 250+ workshops, screenings and talks across Oona Bar, Niemetzstraße 1, and external locations.

Now led by Leona Ojake as Programme Director, the focus of Unity In The Community will remain intercultural, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary creation and exchange. The aim is to enable people to have equal access to artistic and cultural education and to promote their creative participation and skills.

How do we see the future of Unity In The Community?

We will continue to provide educational opportunities to marginalisied and underrepresented groups and diversify the music and creative scenes. Our projects aim to amplify social justice issues by providing a platform for people to share their experiences and the stories they care about, while keeping culture alive and strengthening its role as an important pillar of society.

Economic barriers and underrepresentation in the creative industries too often prevent people from entering employment or growing and developing as artists. Our programmes are designed precisely as a counterweight to that: targeted at underrepresented groups, offered at the lowest possible financial entry point, and rooted in the belief that a more diverse creative scene is a stronger one.

Sweeping cuts to our city's cultural budget have placed enormous pressure on independent organisations like ours, threatening the infrastructure that grassroots creative work depends on. Unity In The Community aims to ensure that Refuge Worldwide can operate outside of the state sphere.

By founding an official non-profit we hope this opens us up to different funding opportunities, meaning we can keep going forward with our work in a more sustainable way.

Help continue our work by becoming a supporter on the Unity In The Community website here. Please reach out via email with any questions or possibilities to collaborate.

Thank you to everyone who has been involved in the journey to this point - we are excited for new projects and opportunities.

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Official UITC website.