The Story
Conversations from Calais
In October of 2019, following her experience volunteering in the French port city of Calais, Mathilda Della Torre started Conversations from Calais.
The project, which has now also been published into a book, aims to re-humanise those affected by the refugee crisis by using public space to share conversations volunteers have had with migrants met in Calais. It is a way of bearing witness for the thousands of displaced people stuck in Calais and trying to reach the UK, whose voices are so often silenced or ignored. This ever-growing collection of conversations focuses on capturing the diversity of experiences and avoids creating new stereotypes of refugees as villains, heroic figures or hopeless victims.