The Freedom Project is a participatory photography exhibition created with young Saharawi refugees living in refugee camps in south-west Algeria, offering a powerful and deeply personal insight into life in exile.
Join us for the Opening Event of this special exhibition as part of Refugee Week, the world’s largest arts and culture festival celebrating the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary.
Emma Brown and Becky Hall from Olive Branch Arts will be joined by a Saharawi activist from the Occupied Territories of Western Sahara, in conversation with Beccy Allen, SMH Arts and Wellbeing Director who spent a year volunteering the Saharawi Refugee Camps in 2017/18.
About the exhibition
Developed in collaboration with Olive Branch Arts and delivered by award-winning photographer Emma Brown, these photographs were taken during intensive photography training programs in which participants are supported in developing creative and technical skills while documenting their lives, communities, and perspectives in their own voices.
The Saharawi people have lived in these refugee camps for fifty years, following displacement from Western Sahara. Through these photographs, participants share moments of everyday life, resilience, joy, uncertainty, and hope—challenging simplified narratives of refugee experience and creating space for deeper understanding and connection.
Rather than being photographed by outsiders, participants become the authors of their own stories. Their images invite viewers to engage directly with lived experience and to reflect on themes of identity, belonging, displacement, and the enduring human capacity for creativity and resistance.
The exhibition offers a rare opportunity to encounter Western Sahara through the eyes of a new generation of Saharawi photographers and to learn more about one of the world’s longest-running yet often overlooked refugee situations.
Suitable for all audiences, The Freedom Project will resonate particularly with those interested in photography, human rights, social justice, and the power of art to foster empathy and dialogue.
About Olive Branch Arts
Olive Branch Arts is a socially engaged arts organisation working collaboratively with communities to use creativity as a tool for dialogue, storytelling, and social understanding. Emma Brown has worked in close collaboration with them since 2012.
A photographic artist and workshop facilitator her0 work is centred on photography’s power to connect people, hold stories, and create space for voices to be heard. Alongside her own artistic practice, she has worked internationally on participatory photography projects that support individuals and communities to tell their own stories through image-making.
Since 2017, she has led photography workshops with young Saharawi refugees in south-west Algeria, supporting participants to develop creative and technical skills to document and share their lived experiences. Since 2022, she has also been involved in touring exhibitions and talks across the UK with Olive Branch Arts and Amnesty International groups, bringing these stories to wider audiences.
Her practice is grounded in the belief that photography can foster connection, dignity, and deeper understanding across cultures and borders.
@olive_branch_arts | @emmabrownphotography
Contact: If you have any questions regarding this exhibition, please email programming@stmargaretshouse.org.uk
Venue: The Gallery Cafe at St Margaret’s House, 21 Old Ford Road, E2 9PL (Plan your visit)
Access: step-free entry to The Gallery Cafe is at the rear, through the garden. It is accessible through the gate located two doors to the left of the cafe’s main entrance. If you need access to an accessible toilet, please let us know so we can arrange that.
Date: Thursday 18th June
Times: 6.30-8.30pm