The Forum – Where London Happens
MRCF has had a makeover... Many of you probably know us as the Migrant and Refugee Communities Forum or MRCF. We spent the summer revisioning, rebranding, and remaking our image to reflect what we've...
View ArticleA Day in the Life of a Games Maker 2012
Bounce it, flip it, dunk it! That's how our training started – in my case it was a week before the Games. This August, I was a volunteer translator. They called us Gamers Makers because we made the...
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Life Before and After ESOL
The life of adult migrants who cannot speak English is strewn with difficulties. As adults, and often parents, they have responsibilities and they must manage their everyday life commitments. Moreover,...
View ArticleRevising ESOL: Students’ Perspectives
The best way to discover the pros and cons of ESOL classes is to talk directly to the students. I have interviewed seven adult ESOL students between the ages of 25 and 37 with the aim of identifying...
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Revising ESOL: Teachers’ Perspectives
Teachers are the other side of ESOL provision. Not only do they deal directly with the core issues of ESOL provision, but they are also the ones who struggle every day to improve it. I have interviewed...
View ArticleNight Workers: London’s Unseen Migrants Workforce
In order for London to have a 24 hour society, many people staff the restaurants, hotels, shops, shipping, and factories that run around-the-clock. The mini cab and bus drivers, market traders, night...
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Night workers: Market Trader
Zaheer came from Pakistan in 2009 at the age of 25. His extended family helped him to settle when he arrived to the UK. He is married and has a 6 month old daughter. He studied a BSc in Business at...
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Night workers: Day-time Student, Night-time Rickshaw Driver
Featured photo courtesy of Martino's doodle Faruk arrived to the UK from Bangladesh about 5 years ago. He lives with his wife and he does an MBA course at LSE till September 2013. He has been a...
View ArticleNight workers: Chef in London’s Chinatown
Featured photo courtesy of Az1172's photostream Zheng Han arrived to the UK in 1996, at the age of 34. He comes from Fujian province in China and speaks Mandarin Chinese. He lives undocumented in...
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Life in the UK: Romanians in London through immersive theatre?
Cover photo by Dan Perjovski ‘Romanians are vampires sucking up the jobs of the British’ – Paul I have written here before about the Romanian community in London, and in particular about a group of...
View ArticleNeed to see a doctor? Want to take the tube to work? Look ‘a bit foreign’?...
One of my New Year's resolutions—and there were only a handful—was to focus on positive things at work. I decided to stop feeding the negative discourse on immigration as it made me depressed and...
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The Forum’s 20th Anniversary
2013 at The Forum was a year as great as it was challenging. The challenges come from a hostile policy and public environment in which immigrants continue to be blamed for all kinds of social...
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