Refugee Stories Project – Museum Fieldworker Initiative
In 2017, the migration museum Red Star Line launched the Fieldworker Project. Fieldworkers (I and several other journalists) were people with refugee or migration backgrounds trained to collect personal stories of displacement, migration, and resettlement.
What made this project unique was that we, the fieldworkers shared cultural, linguistic, or regional connections with the people we interviewed. We spoke their interviewees’ native languages and understood their countries or regions of origin, creating an atmosphere of trust that allowed deeply personal stories to be shared wth us.
Becoming a fieldworker required intensive training in heritage collection methods and interview techniques. The project team gathered more than 30 inspiring refugee stories, which became part of the museum’s permanent collection. These stories have since served as the foundation for exhibitions, publications, cultural productions, and educational activities developed in collaboration with external partners.
My Role
As a fieldworker, I participated in this important heritage and oral history project by conducting 10 in-depth interviews with refugees from different parts of the world who had come to Belgium. Through these conversations, I documented their experiences of displacement, their journeys to safety, the challenges they faced in building new lives, and their hopes for the future.
The project gave me the opportunity to preserve stories that might otherwise have been lost and to contribute to a broader understanding of migration and refugee experiences in Belgium.
My role involved searching for refugees to interview through my own network, preparing the settings and questions, conducting the interviews, filming, recording these personal testimonies in Premiere Pro and other programs, editing and producing ready to watch filmed documentaries.
The experience strengthened my interviewing, communication, and intercultural skills while allowing me to contribute to a project that promotes inclusion, understanding, and respect for diverse life stories.
The results of this project and my interviews can be watched on the website of the project Specially Unknown here.
My Story 