The Refuge Journal Project 2025
a collaborative vision of refuge
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WHAT IS THE REFUGE JOURNAL PROJECT 2025?
The Refuge Journal Project 2025 is an international public art project intended to create a collaborative vision of refuge.
Through this collaborative project, 50 physical journals have been distributed internationally to writers, poets, painters, musicians, performance artists, actors, dancers, collage artists, and sculptors. Together, we are investigating the meaning of refuge.
WHY WE STARTED THE REFUGE JOURNAL PROJECT 2025
2025 is a hell of a year. We have no idea what it will continue to encompass on a personal, national, or global level. But we do know that we need to keep creating art and community as we move through it.
The world we live in is shifting under our feet. Daily we swim in the uncertain tides of politics, conflict, and an ever-changing environment. These tremors show up in our personal and creative lives, in how we hold our artistry, our bodies, our relationships. It seems that the minute we get our bearings, the ground shakes yet again. But in offering, receiving, creating, and defining Refuge, and by sharing these journals hand to hand, artist to artist, country to country, we establish a collaborative conversation, a place from which we might extend Refuge to the communities and individuals who need it the most.
HOW TO GET A REFUGE JOURNAL
Many of the Refuge Journals have already been distributed to a large international network of writers, poets, artists, and musicians. We have a limited number of Journals left but if you’d like one, please email us at refugejournalproject@gmail.com and we will gladly mail you one.
HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN REFUGE JOURNAL
We come from a Samizdat tradition, in which art is created and distributed as a form of resistance against any force that would subjugate self-expression, truth, or human compassion. If you have found this site and have not had the chance to contribute to a journal, we invite you to make your own! Pass it among your friends, colleagues, and fellow artists in all mediums. Please drop us a line at refugejournalproject@gmail.com to let us know you’re launching a journal. We’re excited to have you in our Community of Refuge.
WHAT DO I DO WITH MY JOURNAL
Anything you like!
But here are some tips:
When you receive a journal from a fellow artist, READ IT. And then CREATE. Use as many of the pages as you want. Take exactly the space you need and leave space for the artists that will come after you. You can write, draw, paint, sketch, collage, sew, or offer written music or lyrics. You can work from memory or imagination or any combination, in any language you want. You’ll find a scattering of prompt pages throughout the journal. You might also choose to invite the ideas, reactions, artistry, or responses of other artists by creating your own prompt pages. If you respond to the art of others, do so creatively! Stay honest and authentic, avoid attacks or diminishment and do not harm or remove another artist’s pages.
Here are some ideas:
Think about what refuge means to you. How does it work? Write a memory of seeking refuge or dreaming of it, or offering refuge to another. What have you sought refuge from? What places or people have sheltered you? What objects or colors give you refuge? Where and how have you sought sanctuary? Can words be a refuge? And where do you, have you, might you, offer refuge to others?
Write on any page you want, as many pages as you want, anywhere in the Journal
Write a recipe or spell for refuge
Write an acrostic of the word REFUGE
Create a shelter for a poem yet to be written
Use one of the prompt pages seeded in the Journal
Create an exercise, invitation, question, or prompt page to be used by someone else
Use any version of this Lead Line: “I take refuge in…”
Describe the exact sound of refuge
Draw a part of the body in which you find refuge
Write a piece of music inspired by refuge
Draw, collage, or paint a scene of refuge
Design a dwelling in which a person or animal or idea finds refuge
What is the taste of refuge?
Make a list of places where you have sought refuge
Write a love letter to someone who offered you refuge
Fold, cut, seal, or staple a page on which you portray refuge
Write a short story about someone who refuses refuge, to themselves or to another
Write a memory of a moment in your life when you realized you needed refuge
Write a prayer for those seeking or providing refuge
Write a new definition for the word refuge, one that holds the truth of your body
HOW COPYRIGHT WORKS
This is a Public Art Project, an exercise in Collaborative Vision. While we encourage you to sign your work with your name, date, and location, we cannot guarantee your copyright or control what happens to your work when it enters public space. This is a zero-profit project. All contributing artists offer their work freely and consent to the possibility of their work being posted on the Refuge Journal website.
HOW TO FIND SOMEONE TO PASS THE JOURNAL ON TO
If you have a journal and no one to pass it on to, email us at refugejournalproject@gmail.com and we’ll connect you with another artist.
HOW TO SEND A JOURNAL BACK TO US
If you are the last artist to add your work to this journal or if you have a journal and choose not to send it onward to another artist, please see the instructions and address on the back page of the Journal on how to return it to us, or email us at refugejournalproject@gmail.com.
WHAT WE WILL DO WITH THE WORK
As the journals are returned to us, we will begin posting pages on this website and sharing the collaborative vision of refuge created by artists around the world.
HOW TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO SUPPORT THIS PROJECT
If you use Social Media please feel free to promote this Project there, we are on Instagram at refugejournalproject
IF YOU WANT TO DONATE TO THE PROJECT
You really don’t have to. This is a zero-profit project and we’re happy to foot the bill. We want everyone to be able to contribute without any financial burden. However, if you are determined to contribute to mailing or printing costs, just email us at refugejournalproject@gmail.com and we will try to talk you out of it.
WHO WE ARE
We are two poets and editors who are committed to the urgency of finding, naming, dreaming, building, providing and sharing a vision of Refuge.
Lisa Birman is a poet and novelist who splits her time between Australia and the United States. Her first novel, How To Walk Away (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2015), was awarded the 2016 Colorado Book Award in Literary Fiction. She is the editor of Dearest Annie, You wanted a report on Berkson’s class: Letters from Frances LeFevre to Anne Waldman (Hanging Loose Press, 2016), co-editor of the anthology Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action (Coffee House Press, 2004), and author of a hybrid poetry collection, For That Return Passage—A Valentine for the United States of America (Hollowdeck Press, 2008). She worked with Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program for over a decade and served as writing faculty and faculty director of Naropa University’s Study Abroad Semester in Prague. She is a freelance editor, working with writers on everything from coaching and developmental editing to line editing, copy editing, and proofreading.
Max Regan is a teacher, an internationally published poet and writer, and the founder of Hollowdeck Press, LLC. He has taught poetry, prose and creative writing to various groups for the past 30 years. Max has worked as a journalist, and has taught and lectured at the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, Rose Medical Center and Naropa University. Max served for over a decade as the Director of the Naropa Summer Writing Program and was the founder and director of Naropa University’s Study Abroad Semester in Prague. In his work as a Developmental/ Content Editor and writing coach Max has worked with a diverse array of clients including authors who have worked with publishers including Simon and Schuster, Counterpoint, WW Norton, Random House, HarperCollins, Longacre Press, Free Press, Lantern Books, Pegasus Press, Spirituality and Health Publications and Coffee House Press.
The Refuge Journal Project 2025 