Scotland Welcomes Refugees 2019

Live printing at THE REFUGEE COALITION’S ANNUAL refugee event

On Saturday we arrived at Sense Scotland in the midst of all the #SWR2019 visitors, the Refuweegee team and all it’s partner organisations getting a group photograph taken. Minutes later we were in one of the upstairs rooms talking a room full of adults and children through the process to create a paper stencil.

Before long a queue formed with Arianna taking the lead to help the kids print their own design onto one side of their welcome pack tote bag and Beth helping people to print the logo onto the other side. The room was a frenzy of excitement as everyone saw how easy it is to turn a simple line drawing into a print on a tote bag and get great results!

After a swift lunch break we returned to the room to host two sit down sessions where Arianna facilitated some quick and fun drawing exercises, suggesting participants use the person sitting opposite them for reference. The resulting designs included portraits, silhouettes of different origin countries and a lot of hearts… showing all the love being spread around on the day at the event!

We made a duplicate of each bag so that welcome packs with refugee’s designs from the event could be given to new refugees arriving in Scotland in the coming weeks.

On our way out of the building, flagging slightly after a fun and action packed day, we noticed a post-note on the comments board in the main hall: “Tote bag decorating was amazing!.” It was all we needed to know that we had made a lot of people smile that day!