World Refugee Day 2023 – Hope away from home!

Together with the German Climate Foundation and the project Climate Faces, we built a “bridge” this year and offered a two-part workshop on the topic of “climate migration” for students in the morning: In our Kalliope Hall, we connected to our special exhibition “After the Flood, the Flight” (2009) about the flood disaster following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 in New Orleans.

How much more threatened is life behind the dike due to climate change, and how can and should people in Bremerhaven actively deal with this? The students of the ninth grades at the Geestemünde Secondary School and the School at Ernst-Reuter-Platz were able to find this out only through discussions with the city’s climate adaptation manager, Dr. Lars Max, and then further discuss it in a workshop phase. For the second part, the youths then continued to the Climate House Bremerhaven.

In the evening, the film “The Swimmers” (USA/UK, 2022) and a panel discussion with Wisam Mahmoud (German Climate Foundation), Christoph Bongert (German Emigration Center), Dr. Katherine Braun (Refugee Officer of the Protestant Lutheran Church in Northern Germany), and Dr. Ulrich Wischnath (Climate House Bremerhaven) at the Climate House Bremerhaven invited reflection on current political debates about migration, flight, and asylum, and on their media processing.

Once again, a heartfelt thank you to all participants for the stimulating conversations, thoughts, and ideas on this World Refugee Day!

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