Refugees & Asylum Seekers, by guest blogger Helena Kyriakides

There is something terribly frightening about the current refugee situation with thousands of people seeking asylum in Europe. The amount of judgmental and highly critical social media posts that express anger, despair and fear about how these people, considered delinquents, will be infiltrating 'our countries', living as parasites off the state and stealing our well-being is growing daily. My wonderful, talented friend, Marion Cheung has just held another exhibition dealing with contemporary issues. Her last exhibition, "Lost Connections" which deals with our (and specifically our children's) removal from reality through the use of digital media and its subsequent pollution of the environment and people, has just held an exhibition involving refugees that have recently landed in Wales. 

Refugees were asked to tell their stories both on stage and on paper, interpreting their fight, their flight, the pain, the anger and how they view themselves as refugees. This is a highly compassionate and empathetic view of people who are, as Marion says, "just ordinary people who have been forced to leave their homes because their lives were seriously in danger". We are all just ordinary people, many of whose relatives or ancestors were refugees in their own right.