The Refuge Journal Project 2025

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 going to be a hell of a year. We have no idea what it will encompass on a personal, national, or global level. But we do know that we’ll 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. Sometimes 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.

WHAT DO I DO WITH MY JOURNAL

Anything you like!

But here are some tips:

When you receive a journal, READ IT. And then CREATE. Use as many of these pages as you want. Take exactly the space you need and leave space for the artists that 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 artists’ pages.

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? What is the sound of refuge? Can words be a refuge? And where do you, have you, might you, offer refuge to others?

Here are just some ideas:

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 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 their work being posted on the Refuge Journal website.

HOW TO GET A REFUGE JOURNAL

If you’d like a journal, please email us at refugejournalproject@gmail.com

HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN REFUGE JOURNAL

We come from a samizdat tradition. If you have found this site and have not had the chance to contribute to a journal, we invite you to make your own! 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.

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.

HOW TO SEND A JOURNAL BACK TO US

If you are the last artist to add your work to this journal, please see the instructions on how to get it back 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

Tag us at #therefugejournalproject

[X – I’ll look at launching an Instagram too] {heaven help me}

HOW TO DONATE

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 would like to contribute to mailing or printing costs, you can do so at XXX. Thank you!

PICTURES OF JOURNALS/ PAGES

WHO WE ARE

A couple of motherfuckers.

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 for publications around the country, 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 faculty advisor of Naropa University’s Study Abroad Semester in Prague. Max has worked with a diverse array of clients including authors who have published high-quality indie/self published books using POD sites such as Create Space, iUniverse, Blurb, Lulu and others. He also edits for authors who have published mainstream books with publishers including Simon and Schuster, Counterpoint, WW Norton, Random House, HarperCollins, Longacre Press, Free Press, Lantern Books, Pegasus Press, Spirituality and Health Publications, Coffee House Press and Spuyten Duyvil. Authors have been featured in many media outlets including The New York Times Review of Books, Oprah Magazine, People Magazine, ABC Nightline, NBC Today and The Travel Channel.

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’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.

CONTACT

We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch at refugejournalproject@gmail.com.