Theatre company Maison Foo are to take over the dining room at Derby Museums’ Pickford’s House to stage A Seat at our Table, a “multisensory celebration of food, family and friendship co-created with friends seeking sanctuary in Derby”.
The project aims to give residents with refugee and asylum seeker status in the city a positive platform from which to tell and share their stories through audio, visual installation, theatre design and live conversation.
Bethany Sheldon, Maison Foo’s artistic director, said, “I don’t think there’s been a more important time than now to open our hearts and communities to people seeking sanctuary in this country. With war continuing in places like Ukraine and people in Afghanistan still coming to terms with new rulers, we need to show solidarity, not inhumanity.
“A Seat at our Table is an invitation to be part of changing the story of where refugees’ voices are heard. By sitting down at our table and listening to these stories, you’ll be part of making history too as these stories will be served up in the dining room at Pickford’s House. This is a grand historical dining room where stories have been told across the table for hundreds of years. Until now refugee dining stories have been missing from the house’s history.”
Commissioned by Derby CAN (Creative Arts Network), A Seat at our Table will be served up in Pickford’s House from Tuesday 11 until Saturday 16 October. Further information is available at the Maison Foo web site.