Migrant Steps / Göçmen Adımlar (2013-2015)

Migrant Steps is a theatre project that engages migrant women living in the UK and Europe. Starting from the figure of a travelling tortoise and combining walking, physical performer training and autobiographical writing, the project explores participants’ relationship with the cities where they live.

The project started in London, in collaboration with Day-Mer, London’s Turkish/Kurdish/Cypriot community organisation, and supported by an Arts Council project grant and in kind by partners such as North London Community House and Goldsmiths University.

Starting from the image of a travelling tortoise, we asked: What happens if migrant women engage creatively with the urban space?  How does it affect our understanding of home?  Can those of us who often stay within restricted areas and stick to the same routes between home, the shops, kids’ school, wander freely? 

Through fortnightly group drifts, purposefully yet safely getting lost in different corners of London, and workshops exploring our bodies and voices and searching for other forms of dis- and re-orientation on alternating weekends, participants devised and performed a theatre production, professionally designed and documented by other Turkish-speaking artists thanks to our Arts Council England grant. The project won the Walk21 Vienna Walking Visionaries Award 2015 in Walking and the Arts.

Watch the live theatre performance below:

Watch the documentary by Alev Erdoğan here:

The project continued through a series of workshops facilitated elsewhere in the UK and Europe, by Dilek Koca and Göze Saner, based on the process of making Göçmen Adımlar/Migrant Steps in London, incorporating embodied exploration in the studio with the experience of collectively drifting. We also screened the video documentation of the performance and Alev Erdoğan’s documentary film for participants. These workshops were hosted by ATKB (Organisation of Women from Turkey) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands (April 2014), Refugee Action York and York Theatre Royal, in York, UK (October 2014), Bundesverband der Migrantinnen (Migrant Women’s Organisation) in Berlin, Germany (June 2015), Cemevi, in Bünde, Germany (June 2015). Additionally, I was commissioned to contribute to the urban regeneration theatre project SpazioTeatro in Turin (October 2017-November 2018) and members of the cast and I were invited to speak at a Performance Research Forum event at Goldsmiths University.

I wrote about the project in different contexts, including: (2018) “Containers of Practice: Would you step into my shell?” in Performance as Research: Knowledge, Methods, Impact, London: Routledge; with Yeni, Naz (2018) Migrant Steps: Interview with Göze Saner. Book 2.0, 8 (1-2). pp. 125-135; (2015) “Drifting as a Migrant Woman” in Walk21 Conference Magazine 40; and with Saniye Dedeoğlu (2017) “Turkish/Kurdish Women’s Migrant Steps in London: Public Walks/Personal Returns” in Identity, Justice and Resistance in the Neoliberal City, London: Palgrave.