Since 2017 Dixon has initiated several public participation projects, working with refugees and asylum seekers to give voice to their experiences. ‘Refugee Tales’ was developed in collaboration with the British Ceramics Biennial and the Burslem Jubilee Project and was supported by the AHRC/HLF Voices of War and Peace funding programme.

The ‘Medals for Peace’ were made by contemporary refugees and asylum seekers in response to historical artefacts relating to Belgian refugees in the First World War. The ‘Refugee Tales’ poem was created by Barry Taylor using text composed by the Burslem Jubilee Group.

It provides the narrative for ‘Refugee Tales: a poem in 15 plates’, a series of charity-shop plates printed with images of Belgian refugees from the First World War, overlaid with Dixon’s drawings of the ‘Medals for Peace’.

‘Breakable’ (2019) directed by Johnny Magee operates as both artwork and documentary. The video synthesises the multiple elements of the evolving project and is interspersed with lines of the Refugee Tales poem read by Ayad, one of the key members of the Burslem Jubilee Group.

Photos Johnny Magee and Stephen Dixon