Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary

Swarthmore College's Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary will bring together book artists and members of Philadelphia’s Iraqi and Syrian refugee communities to create artists’ books that amplify personal narratives of displacement, immigration, and sanctuary. Working in partnership with the immigrant and refugee service organization Nationalities Service Center, Swarthmore will invite a group of refugees to work with three book artists and participate in multi-day workshops designed to provide access to new creative tools, and to explore various aspects of visual storytelling, artistic expression, and craft. Swarthmore’s library collections—including a large book arts collection and the “Peace Collection,” the largest archive of peace-related material in the US—will be made available to participants, with materials translated into Arabic. Both the workshop participants and the book artists will create books for a culminating exhibition, and an exhibition catalogue will document the project and the artistic work.

Additional unrestricted funds are added to each grant for general operating support.