Qisashome is a non-profit association that brings the work of the Qisashome digital archive into physical, shared, and collaborative spaces. Through its activities, Qisashome advocates for lived experience to be recognised as a form of knowledge, one that reveals the extent to which political violence can reshape and disfigure people’s intimate relationships with place and self. It advocates for the importance of preserving these experiences and drawing on them in conversations about rebuilding social relations and communities in the aftermath of political violence.
Through exhibitions, creative writing workshops, storytelling events, publications, and collaborations, the association creates opportunities for stories, memories, and creative works to be encountered, explored, and shared in different ways.
Qisashome organises exhibitions bringing together artworks, photographs, objects, and other creative works collected through the archive. These exhibitions bring the digital archive into physical spaces, allowing its materials to be encountered beyond the screen and in conversation with one another.
Qisashome organises interactive creative writing workshops, both online and in person, centred around the themes of home and belonging. Through creative writing tools and collective reflection, the workshops create a space to explore memories, places, relationships, and experiences through writing.
Qisashome organises storytelling events where stories can move from the page into a shared space. Through readings, spoken storytelling, performance, sound, and other forms of expression, these events create opportunities for people to gather around stories and experience them together.
Once a year, Qisashome publishes a magazine bringing together words and art from across the project. The magazine offers another form through which stories, photographs, artworks, and other contributions can be preserved, brought into conversation with one another, and shared with a wider audience.
Qisashome is open to collaborations with independent organisations, initiatives, and projects that share its core purpose and agree to work in accordance with its editorial guidelines. Collaborations can take different forms, including joint workshops, exhibitions, storytelling events, publications, and other projects that create spaces for lived experiences and creative work to be documented and shared.
