Rowena Dring is an artist who challenges traditional boundaries by incorporating the traditional ‘women’s work’ of sewing and needlework with large-scale painting. She first started this type of art after her father died, and observes that ‘when you feel like your world has been shattered apart, actually working with collage, putting things back together with sewing and stitching is a way of reordering your world.’

This year Hiraeth is beginning a new type of in-person event in Amsterdam, one designed to bring creative people of all kinds together over this shared human experience of migration and the longing for home.

I talk with Dori about her work finding meaning in material as different as maps and the covers of science fiction novels, what lockdown is like with just her, her cat Milo and all her Zoom classes, and her resolve to ‘use the fine China’, meaning the objects and useful items family and friends have gifted her.

Ana is currently undergoing active treatment for cancer, and during our interview she shares her journey toward healing, what she has learned along the way, and how it feels to be a cancer patient during a pandemic. We talk about how coronavirus and lockdown have impacted her, and what she wishes people knew about cancer in the time of corona, and how we can take care of the vulnerable among us.

Erica Eastley has lived an adventurous life in several different countries in Central Asia, the Middle East and beyond. She talks about why Central Asia and Cairo both feel like home to her, when Saudi Arabia and Mexico did not. She tells us what’s going on with the pandemic in Egypt, what has changed and what hasn’t, and how she is trying to help the refugees she works with make it through this difficult time.

Rowena Dring is an artist who challenges traditional boundaries by incorporating the traditional ‘women’s work’ of sewing and needlework with large-scale painting. She first started this type of art after her father died, and observes that ‘when you feel like your world has been shattered apart, actually working with collage, putting things back together with sewing and stitching is a way of reordering your world.’

‘Emily’ tells us what it’s like being a woman in a country where her husband has to sign off on her every decision, from how to landscape the front yard to each and every withdrawal she wants to make from their joint bank account. And she talks about what life is like now during the pandemic under 24-hour curfew.

Lisa Ferland recently began working for the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), specifically on the coronavirus pandemic. We talk with her about how the Swedish approach to the pandemic differs from what other countries are doing, and how cultural differences affect the way the coronavirus progresses in different places.

Ana is currently undergoing active treatment for cancer, and during our interview she shares her journey toward healing, what she has learned along the way, and how it feels to be a cancer patient during a pandemic. We talk about how coronavirus and lockdown have impacted her, and what she wishes people knew about cancer in the time of corona, and how we can take care of the vulnerable among us.

Rowena Dring is an artist who challenges traditional boundaries by incorporating the traditional ‘women’s work’ of sewing and needlework with large-scale painting. She first started this type of art after her father died, and observes that ‘when you feel like your world has been shattered apart, actually working with collage, putting things back together with sewing and stitching is a way of reordering your world.’

Ella Bulley creates objects that help Ghanaian expats adapt to new spaces.