CECILIA'S STORY - GHOSTS OF YARL'S WOOD

Until March 2025
FREE

HEAL Collective with Cecilia Mwenda

A co-created documentary project enabling a personal story of immigration detention survival, justice-seeking and rebuilding to be shared.

It’s 2008 and a woman is fleeing gender-based violence in her unstable home. How do she and her 8-year-old son end up in Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre in the UK? And how does she rebuild her life afterwards, while navigating the trauma of a system that continues to haunt her?

In this Project Lab exhibition, HEAL Collective traces Cecilia’s story, from her childhood in Malawi to her flight to the UK, and her disastrous journey through the asylum system. We see how a system purported to protect the vulnerable can end up inflicting further trauma; learn about the political incentives that drive law-making; and the flaws in the legal system that enable people to fall through the cracks at deeply precarious periods in their life.

We also see the vital role that community networks and human connection play in creating alternative spaces to such systems; the workable alternatives that exist to immigration detention; and the determination of Cecilia to use her story to affect change.

The exhibition consists of a 57-minute documentary film alongside visual storyboards and textual resources that provide a rare insight into the oft-concealed mechanisms of immigration detention, and the campaign for systemic change. ‘Cecilia’s Story’ was co-created by Cecilia Mwenda in collaboration with HEAL Collective: a migration arts collective that produces powerful co-creative projects with people affected by the UK asylum and immigration systems, offering opportunities for narrative reclamation and change.

Please note that Cecilia’s Story contains material that some viewers may find upsetting and is recommended for viewers aged 12+.

A Learning and Engagement Resources Pack accompanying the exhibition can be accessed here.

You can find out more about HEAL Collective, who co-created the exhibition with Cecilia, here.