Posted on: 28/09/2026
Posted on: 12/02/2026
What is a Home? Students Partner with The Alsama Project for Five-Day Opera Workshop
Create-an-Opera is a collaborative project bringing together young people from The Alsama Project in Beruit and Buckinghamshire’s Cressex Community School and Highcrest Academy. Over the course of five days in early February, participants visited Garsington Studios both in person and virtually to devise and create their own original opera. Students from Cressex and Highcrest connected online with students from the Alsama Project to explore the questions ‘What is a home?’
There were 29 students from years 7, 8 and 9 that took part in the project. The theme 'what is a home?' was chosen by the Alsama students, as since we had last met them they had returned 'home' to Syria from the refugee camp that they had been living in in Lebanon. The students and their families found that their houses and family were no longer there in Syria and so many returned to the camp and school in Lebanon. For many of them school is now 'home'.
To the students from Alsama that we worked with, home was 'a safe space', 'a place with family'. Our students identified home as 'a place where my grandma cooks Jolliff', 'where I relax with my cat' and 'where I feel safe and have fun with my family'.
