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Building cultural infrastructure in exile

Notes on making something permanent out of displacement.

Exile is usually told as a story of loss. It is also, more quietly, a story of building — of people who arrive with a language and a practice and begin, almost immediately, to make institutions.

A space like ours is infrastructure: walls, a calendar, a mailing list, a kettle. Unglamorous, and exactly the point. Culture needs somewhere reliable to happen.

We are interested in the boring permanence of a fixed address — a door that opens on the same evenings, a programme you can plan your week around.

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