Refugee Week is the world’s largest arts and culture festival celebrating the contributions, creativity and courage of people who have been forced to flee, and of those who stand alongside them.
The 2026 theme, Courage, invited reflection on the many ways courage shows up in everyday life through resilience, care, community and solidarity.
As a recognised University of Sanctuary, the University of Reading marks Refugee Week as an important moment within our wider, ongoing commitment to creating a welcoming, inclusive and supportive environment where everyone feels a sense of belonging. It also reflects our continued commitment to global civic responsibility and is one of the ways we make those values visible and lived across our campuses.
This year we hosted a programme of events across Whiteknights Campus and The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) that brought together opportunities for conversation, creativity, learning and reflection, shaped by both students and staff, in collaboration with the newly established Sanctuary Society.
The Sanctuary Society was created to promote integration, inclusion and support for students from refugee, asylum-seeking and international backgrounds, as well as allies, and was integral to the planning of this year's Refugee Week programme. Find out more about the Sanctuary Society.
Refugee Week at Reading is both an invitation and a statement of intent: to come together with care, to strengthen community, and to be part of a university grounded in dignity, compassion and shared humanity.
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Refugee Week