Ahead of Refugee Week, we’re using Friday 5th June, from 12:00pm–2:30pm, as an opportunity to launch Kokoo Footprint through what we’re calling a community-led social experiment; an open invitation that sits within this year’s Refugee Week theme of Courage.

We’ll be gathering at the Kokoo and Chocolate Heritage Repair Museum, a space rooted in storytelling, memory, repair and our shared histories of movement and connection:

Kokoo and Chocolate Heritage Repair Museum
Unit 4 Northgate House
Market Street, Halifax
HX1 1UR

We often speak about the courage required of migrants, refugees and people seeking sanctuary: the courage to leave familiar places, familiar languages, cultures and ways of life and step into uncertainty; the courage required to build a sense of home where home has been disrupted.

But we’ve been thinking about courage from another angle.

In an ever-changing political climate, perhaps courage is also needed from those who already call this place home; the courage to accept the unknown, to sit with discomfort, to remain open, and to actively create sanctuary for others.

The social experiment asks a simple but provocative question:

Who gets the privilege to move?

Across our daily lives we are constantly connected to communities across the Global South. Many of these communities are already living at the sharp edge of climate crisis, economic inequality and displacement. Yet while people often cannot move freely across borders, the goods they cultivate, produce and make continue to travel with ease.

We consume their labour, ingredients, resources and products every day.

Cocoa. Dates. Tea. Rice. Cotton. Mangoes. Chocolate. Coffee. Clothing. Everyday essentials.

So we’re extending an invitation to individuals and organisations across Calderdale, and especially to those who hold Sanctuary values close to their work:

Please bring one item from your home, workplace, office or everyday life whose roots begin somewhere in the Global South.

This could be: – an empty date carton
– a tea packet
– a chocolate wrapper
– a spice container
– clothing labels
– rice packaging
– a coffee/ spice jar
– or anything at all.

The item itself is not the point.

The point is recognising our interconnection and asking what it means when goods and resources can travel freely while many of the people connected to them cannot.

Together, we hope to create a collective landscape of everyday objects that quietly reveals how connected our lives already are.

The afternoon itself will unfold as a shared experience of gathering, reflection and hospitality. We’ll begin with a welcoming tea ritual before creating space for people to share the objects they have brought and the stories, memories and connections they hold. We’ll gather around a shared grazing table rooted in foods and ingredients from across the Global South, using food as another way of exploring movement, belonging and our interconnected lives. We’ll then close together through a hand-wash ritual and send-off ceremony as a small collective act of care and reflection.

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