Join a creative online storytelling workshop exploring migrant experiences of leadership exclusion and barriers to career progression.
Many migrants and displaced people arrive with professional qualifications, leadership experience, multilingual skills and valuable knowledge, yet are too often seen only as a source of labour rather than as managers, entrepreneurs, educators, innovators or community leaders. This workshop explores the structural barriers that prevent many migrants from progressing into positions of leadership, influence and decision-making.
Through collaborative storytelling, guided writing exercises and group discussion, participants will reflect on moments when their ideas, skills or leadership potential were overlooked, questioned or dismissed. Together, we will explore themes such as career progression, workplace recognition, access to leadership roles, entrepreneurship, representation within institutions, and the invisible barriers that can limit opportunities and influence.
Alongside these challenges, the workshop will celebrate the many ways migrants demonstrate leadership every day—by organising within their communities, mentoring others, creating informal support networks, advocating for rights, building businesses and developing creative responses to structural barriers. These often-overlooked forms of leadership challenge traditional ideas of who is recognised as a leader and whose knowledge is valued.
The workshop forms part of an ongoing storytelling series within Quiet Power: Migrant Voices for Economic Justice. Participants’ stories will contribute to a growing body of community-led evidence that informs campaigns, exhibitions and advocacy work, helping challenge the perception of migrants as labour only and instead highlighting their expertise, leadership and capacity to shape communities and society.
No previous writing experience is needed. This is a relaxed and welcoming space for reflection, creativity and shared discussion.
About the facilitator
Alicja Rogalska is an artist based in Berlin and London. Her research-led practice explores social structures and the political dimensions of everyday life through collaborative situations, performances, videos and installations that collectively imagine emancipatory futures. She has recently presented work at Zachęta National Art Gallery (Warsaw), n.b.k. (Berlin), Biennale Matter of Art (Prague), Videobrasil (São Paulo) and Manifesta 14 (Prishtina), among others. She is currently completing a PhD in the Art Department at Goldsmiths University of London.
Important information
This workshop is part of the Economic Justice project and the wider work of CEEus! Network — a growing network of migrants, community organisers, artists, professionals and activists strengthening migrant voices, leadership and collective action in the UK.
The workshop forms part of a wider series exploring migrant experiences of work, skills, labour precarity, economic exclusion and career progression in the UK.
Stories, reflections and quotes shared during the workshop may be used in anonymised form in a future exhibition, report or creative outputs as part of this project. Contributions will not be attributed to individuals, so please only share what you feel comfortable sharing in a group setting.
If you would like to connect with other migrants, migrant leaders, creatives, organisers and community members, find out more about our wider work, or become part of the network, you can learn more about CEEus! Migrant Network and join here: https://bit.ly/3hFwFwa
Project funded by Barrow Cadbury Trust.
If you have any questions please contact us on community@centrala-space.org.uk.