Refuge Worldwide launches new non-profit educational platform

Unity In The Community is the new 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 Niemetzstrasse 1 in Berlin-Neukölln.

Founded earlier this year, after several months of navigating German paperwork, we are happy to say our non-profit work is now a official gUG organisation.

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, over 675 free DJ practice sessions, 200+ free music studio sessions, and 250+ workshops, screenings and talks across Oona Bar, Niemetzstraße 1, and external locations.

Thank you to everyone that has led a session here, volunteered, partnered with us, and offered advice on how to operate such a delicate and sensitive platform. It has been extremely rewarding if not without some stressful situations.

Led by Leona Ojake as Programme Director, the focus of Unity In The Community will remain intercultural, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary cultural 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 should 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 a central and 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.

Stay tuned for more information on how to get collaborate or support our work, and contact us here: hello@unityinthecommunity.de