At Home With…: a collaborative filmmaking project made with artists from migratory backgrounds

This article examines At Home With, a collaborative film series that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic and engaged migrant artists in the UK as co-authors in a reimagining of home through moving image. Against the backdrop of the UK’s ‘hostile environment’, we position participatory film practices as both aesthetic and ethical interventions into dominant visual narratives.
Through simple prompts inviting participants to film their daily local walks, meal preparations or meaningful domestic objects, the project shifted from conventional documentation to a decentralised, artist-led practice that foregrounds fragmented, situated, and multisensory understandings of home. The resulting films provoke an understanding of home as liminal: between lands, between hands, and between generations of people who have had to move. We argue that At Home With offers an alternative representational and methodological space—one that acknowledges the complexity of migration and pandemic life while resisting reductive framings.
The article further reflects on how this work has continued in educational settings, highlighting its pedagogical and institutional relevance. We conclude by proposing a set of ethical and aesthetic considerations for practitioners engaged in creative participatory work with individuals and communities with lived experience of migration.