Roskilde Festival: Stories create relations

Every minute, approximately 25 people are forcibly displaced—corresponding to 37,000 per day. The number of registered refugees worldwide is at its highest level ever. According to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, the total figure is of around 70.8 million displaced people. That is more than the population of Thailand. Last year alone, 13.8 million people were forcibly displaced, whereas only 2.9 million returned home.

About 30 per cent of the world’s refugees live in refugee camps, and their lives are the pivot of a project which a group of DTU students from the Architectural Engineering and Design & Innovation programmes have brought with them to the Roskilde Festival.

The Roskilde Festival is often likened to a refugee camp because of the temporary conditions. But there is at least one essential difference: The festival goers return to their homes after the festival. People staying in refugee camps often end up living there for years.

The students have created the design concept Stories In The Shade. In all its simplicity, the design consists of a canopy which is extended between two tents. This creates a space where residents of refugee camps can rest in the shade during the hot daytime hours, chat and share stories, culture and language with their neighbour. The idea is that Stories In The Shade can be one of the solutions that help normalize life in the camps, so that the residents can create a regular day-to-day life.

Refugee camps are generally of a provisional nature, and they are not intended to develop into towns. But it is nonetheless often the case as the camps may end up being used for up to 30 years. The Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya—which is one of the largest in the world with 185,000 residents—has existed since 1991.

Despite this, the camp resembles a temporary structure with tents placed in rows to save space. At the same time, no urban planning concepts dealing with the residents’ social life have been taken into account in the planning of the camp.

“The aim of Stories In The Shade is to create greater social interaction in refugee camps by creating a sunshading canopy between two neighbouring tents. This may contribute to giving the residents a sense of community in an otherwise very uncertain day-to-day existence in which they are living in the camp for an indefinite period,” says Lasse Bruun Korsholm, who is about to conclude his Bachelor’s degree in Architectural Engineering.He is supplemented by Andreas Juul Pedersen, who has just graduated as a Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) in Architectural Engineering: 

“The uncertainty and the fact that they don’t know whether they can go home tomorrow or in ten years are what make refugees lose their identity. So we want to create a social space where they can create ties with a culture and a community. You could say that the focus is on social sustainability.”

At the Roskilde Festival, the students had invited UNHCR’s Danish spokesperson Elisabeth Arnsdorf Haslund to talk about the current refugee situation and UNHCR’s work.

Among other things, she told them that people in refugee camps are highly adaptable to their physical surroundings. For example, some plant gardens to supplement the rations of maize distributed in the camp. The aspect that the refugees themselves mention as the worst problem is the sense of uncertainty and the lack of control of their future.

“There’s a huge difference in how well organized the refugee camps are—and in how many social initiatives they have. I’ve seen examples of places where they try. But—in fact—the problem is often that if, for example, you implement a social initiative for children, there’s no capacity because there are thousands of children living in the camp. In addition, there will always be some very basic needs such as food, water, and health, which the management of the camp is forced to give high priority,” she says and continues:

“A project like Stories In The Shade is interesting because it looks at the great challenge of how to deal with something which is supposed to be of a temporary nature, but which turns into a permanent solution. It’s unfortunately a fact in a large number of places that we see people remaining in the camps for years; sometimes for generations. And any measure that can address other human needs in addition to the completely basic ones is very positive.”