We Are Community – RWN25 was Bigger, and wider reaching, than ever
6th August 2025
Refugee Week Norwich 2025 presented 55+ events, with the help of 60+ event partners, attracting 254,100 atendees! A further 4 closed events took place alongside (for lived-experience participants only). This year we hit our crowdfunder target by 115%. All of which we THANK YOU for.
Refugee Week 2025’s theme was Community – very fitting for a city-wide celebration made possible by the support and enthusiasm of our collective organisations, councils, schools / universities, library system, faith groups and individuals.
Events included:
- Established favourites – a group art show with workshops, wellbeing and city history walks, community meals, storytelling, and family days in parks, gardens and historic and cultural centres.
- New events – Joke Yard’s lived-experience stand-up comedy show, and a halal community meal provided by the Musilm Community Association of Norwich.
- The Schools’ Day of Welcome – which continues to grow, with this year an outstanding 220,000 pupils taking part in online events, and classroom activities. Coverage of their suggested reading list devised with the National Centre for Writing: Books of Welcome, was published by The Guardian.
- County-wide organisations were better represented than ever, with GYROS hosting a Norwich-based event, Diss
- UEA moved it’s Refugee Week programme to fit in with the city’s for the first time!
- The newly established RANN (Refugee Artist Network, Norwich) collective hosted it’s first exhibition, with launch event! It was agreed, subsequently, to rename to reflect a wider demographic of migrant artists.
We are proud to share with you our final Evaluation Report for RWN25.
The stats, in the appendix at the back, are all an improvement on last year…
- Bigger spread of attendees from every postcode in the city and beyond
- 2/3 of attendees had not been to a RWN event before, showing that we are reaching new audiences not just the same people
- The feedback on the outcomes from events shows greater understanding, pride in, and ability to support our new community members.
- I was particularly pleased to finally find/include virtual reality aspects. I was pleased to include the muslim community association and Interfaith Link to represent the faith of a large section of our participants, and overjoyed to have a stand-up comedy show by local lived-experience comedians.
- The numbers now included in the schools work, especially the Schools Day of Welcome, is astounding – exponential growth!
Click Image to open and read…
Posted in: News
