The Silent University: Giving a voice to asylum seekers
(c) Ahmet Ögüt The idea of The Silent University started at the beginning of 2012. It was inspired by the urgent need for a common voice for asylum seekers, refugees and migrants, who although from a professional background, could not practice their profession due to the limitations of residency permits, language barriers and other bureaucratic restrictions. The Silent University challenges the idea of silence as a passive state and investigates how to use it as an active method. We aim to reactivate the knowledge that is lost during the years of the process of seeking asylum. There will be a series of Silent courses taking place on 26, 28 November and 3 December at the Tate Modern’s East Room and Starr Auditorium. Courses are free and open to everyone. The first course, on different types of Arabic calligraphy, will be lead by Behnam Al Agzeer, a calligrapher from Mosul, Iraq. Then B.N. a nurse from the Democratic Republic of Congo, will perform her cour...