UWS are backing a photography competition for the 2021 Refugee Festival Scotland.

Students are challenged to use their imagination and capture what inspires them with three different categories to choose from: ‘My Happy Place’, ‘Something New’ and ‘Connect’ which is also open to the wider community and non-UWS students.

Entries can be submitted until June 17 via internationaladvice@uws.ac.uk with the subject title ‘CC Photo’. Alternatively, you can upload your photo to twitter with the tag @UWS_IntSupport and the hashtag #UWSCelebrateCulture.

Refugee Festival Scotland takes place every year in the lead up to World Refugee Day on June 20. It celebrates the contribution refugee communities make to life in Scotland – the food and drink, music and poetry, dance, visual art and ideas that people bring with them when they seek safety in Scotland.

People from different backgrounds are invited to meet and mix, listen to each other’s stories and get to know each other better. Taking part is a way of standing in solidarity with each other, connecting and building bonds of community and friendship.

This year’s programme is themed on ‘Cohesion’ and focuses on community cohesion.

UWS is committed to advancing and promoting equality and diversity and aims to establish an inclusive culture, free from discrimination and based upon the values of fairness, dignity and respect.

Marla Baird, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Adviser at UWS, says that asylum seekers and refugees are given a sole point of contact in the university from the point of application:

“This approach is taken to ensure the complex support requirements are met at each stage of the process. Information, advice and guidance is provided on funding, applying to university, qualifications needed and progression routes to university both with their current qualifications and articulation from college.”

In 2018/19 the Widening Participation Team at UWS has hosted a ‘Campus Day’ for asylum seekers and refugees who participate in the Bridges Programmes in Glasgow. This session offered prospective students the chance to spend time on campus, to interact with staff and to ask any questions they had.