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The National (Scotland)
The National (Scotland)
National
Adam Robertson

10 things that changed my life – Unesco chair for Refugee Integration Alison Phipps

Adam Robertson spoke with Unesco chair for Refugee Integration Alison Phipps on the 10 things that changed her life.

1 Growing up in Thatcher-era Sheffield

THIS was during the stationing of cruise missiles at Greenham Common and during the closure of all the steelworks and mines in that area. Politically, it really educated me greatly.

I think through that, I grew passionate about nuclear disarmament and injustice. I saw the consequences of mass unemployment and the devastation it created for the people in my classes.

There were suicidal levels of despair amongst people, particularly young people. And I think that, in many ways, set me on a path that meant I was always concerned with injustice and politics.

In my lifetime, it was the most destructive legacy of a politician.

The city has never recovered and has been repeatedly hollowed out. People’s sense of confidence and ability to thrive in well-sustained communities was devastated.

It was tuppence anywhere in the city on the bus, you could go anywhere. It was an amazing trade union city, famously calling itself the socialist republic of South Yorkshire.

But all the things that came with Thatcher’s legacy, the devastation of the Falklands War and the cynical ways that happened made it really clear to me that there was an injustice here being perpetrated against ordinary people.

2 Learning French and German

I WENT on a school exchange to France and Germany when I was 14 and it changed my life. It showed me there was a way out of what was a really depressed environment in the city.

It showed me cultural diversity, linguistic diversity. I subsequently studied languages, I lived abroad and have learnt many languages since then.

Travelling in languages and having recourse to how different people understand the world has been constantly life-changing.

I never fail to be surprised by words in any language or be grateful for the fact I can switch between different languages and switch to maybe one that isn’t from home but is a different way of expressing myself.

They’ve become love lines in my life. I have different people I care about dearly who speak in a different language to my own and my life is infinitely enriched by those ways of being.

And that’s led me to begin to learn Gaelic since living in Scotland and want to engage with the languages of this land. On Burns Night, I can now understand poems in Scots.

3 Being taught names of flowers, trees and hills

MY mum and dad taught me this and through this I knew that I was indigenous to this lovely, denuded land of ours. I think that was a way I knew I was the daughter of people who loved the world and wanted to share it with me.

I think it was a lesson in humility but naming all the hills round about where I grew up, all the names of the plants, particularly the spring flowers of the mountains, I’ve continued to love that and have an active knowledge of plant lore and plant life that was laid down at an early age.

I can name and recognise many, many species. It’s linked to learning languages but you get to learn names from different areas as well.

I came to appreciate them very much and they told me I’m from these lands.

4 Romeo And Juliet

WHEN I was 14, my mum took me to see Romeo And Juliet at Chesterfield Theatre performed by The Young Vic.

It was performed with a cast of black actors as the Montagues and white actors as the Capulets. It completely changed my life.

It was the ultimate education in race relations, it helped me understand race riots, it helped me understand the futility of warring factions. It was an absolutely brilliant introduction into what would be a life of anti-racist advocacy.

It showed me the power of the arts to bridge the gap between the “other”, to enable us as an audience to see what we’re seeing and know it as an absolute tragedy because this doesn’t need to happen.

It placed me in a position where I wanted to do something. I saw the tragedy and futility of culture wars and wars in any form but particularly around racism.

Sheffield was quite a white city when I was growing up there, rather like Glasgow until about 20 years ago, but it sensitised me very deeply and they are key themes in my work.

I went into the theatre one person aged 14 and came out a different person.

5 Lessons in hospitality

THIS is quite a personal one. The lessons, particularly in hospitality, of my grandparents and my parents of the community I grew up in and of the church parish changed my life.

I think one of those was learning to still myself in prayer and habits of prayer. I think through that, yes there might have been what we could call a faith laid down, but far more importantly was an ability to give thanks in all things, to find a practice of gratitude in my life.

I think the ability to sit in silence and in stillness is one which has soothed me in very difficult times. Just the ability to sit with it and sit in silence and hold it in the context of powers greater than myself.

6 Moving to Scotland

I MOVED with my husband Robert when we were very newly married. We came to Glasgow which for me, coming from Sheffield, was very much a home from home.

It was one trade union city to another, one city devastated by the poll tax and the closure of the shipyards to another trying to regenerate as a city of culture.

(Image: newsquest)

One of the first things I did was start volunteering to visit Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre with Scottish Detainee Visitors.

Through that, with Positive Action in Housing, back in I think about 2005/06, we shared our home with people sharing asylum which we’ve done for many years.

Those relationships that I made through Scottish Detainee Visitors and the people who came to live with us, all of them have changed my life profoundly and for the better.

7 Getting an allotment

IT’S within walking distance of my house and I’ve become a tenant of the land. I think that connected me back to that sense of indigeneity – the ability to grow my own vegetables, to never have to go to a supermarket, to harvest my own potatoes, make my own jam and care for the land.

I think through that practice, the land cared for me. It provisioned me and my family and all those folk living in my home.

I think allotments are important, radical spaces of gatherings, of being neighbours – we leak into each other as allotment holders, share our produce and practice a common life that is important. It can often be fractious; we learn conflict transformation around whether a foxglove is a beautiful, wild flower or a weed. All of that I think has been transformational.

8 Becoming a member of the Iona Community

THAT is a radical, Christian community, also an interfaith community that has about 300 members.

It’s worldwide and we have a rule of life which is about a commitment to justice and peace and care for the Earth.

I recommit to that every year but that practice of life is a non-violent, conflict transformational, peace-loving community and being part of that community and part of structures of accountability for how we share the Earth’s resources, our money, how we live our lives and having a group of elders to go with deep wisdom has been something for which I am always grateful.

And becoming a member has certainly changed my life.

9 When we fostered our daughter Rima

SHE turned up on our doorstep as an unaccompanied minor from Eritrea. We ended up in a long struggle with the Home Office for her right to be recognised as a refugee.

Through that, I became a strange, Eritrean-style mother but also a grandmother now and discovering, particularly as a grandmother, there’s no love like it in the world.

Just the love of the grandmother for the grandchildren is just the most amazing thing and I had no idea what that would be like.

That was probably the most life-changing moment of my life was when Rima arrived on the doorstep.

10 Working with Keith Hammond

MY colleague Keith Hammond, a brilliant philosopher, invited me to begin working with him in Palestine, especially in the Gaza Strip.

That was 15 years ago and that has always been a life-changing experience but no less so than in the last 15 months of the genocide.

And the most life-changing thing I think about all of it is the courage and determination of my colleagues in Gaza to continue their education, to continue living life and to refuse to have their dignity made destitute by Israel and the Israeli illegal occupation.

That has been an inspiration but also absolutely life-changing.

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