WALK WITH US
Walk With Us is a landmark city-centre procession led by Mafwa Theatre for Refugee Week 2027.
Refugee, asylum-seeking, migrant and settled communities from across Leeds will work with artists to create banners, music and processional artworks before coming together for a joyful public celebration through the heart of the city.
The project builds on Mafwa Theatre’s established Refugee Week activity in Lincoln Green, taking this celebration citywide and creating a visible civic moment shaped with Leeds’s migrant communities.
Mafwa Theatre has produced annual Refugee Week celebrations in Lincoln Green since 2022, reaching more than 1,500 residents through performance, workshops, discussion and community celebration.
In 2026, our activity grew into a three-day festival featuring over 20 performances and welcoming over 500 attendees. Walk With Us takes the next step: carrying this established celebration from Lincoln Green into Leeds City Centre and creating a flagship public event for Refugee Week.
“Mafwa have created something
really special. It was wonderful
to see so many people from
the local area as well as across
Leeds coming together
with a combined joy.”
— BoomChikkaBoom, Refugee Week 2026 partner
Behind 2027’s procession will
be six months of shared creative work.
Participating communities will develop their banners through collaborative textile workshops, drawing inspiration from collections held by Leeds Museums and Galleries and processional traditions. Their work will come together with a co-created sonic identity, music, performance and large-scale artworks during Refugee Week 2027.
Little Amal's journey through Leeds City Centre. A shared public event animated by communities along its route.
Jeremy Deller's Procession. A city represented through its communities and collective identities.
Le Magma. Transforming public space into a shared theatrical experience through music, movement and encounter.
A Reet Northern Parade. A joyful celebration of Northern communities, stories and identities, brought to life through community participation and procession.
Leeds West Indian Carnival. A longstanding celebration of community, heritage and identity through costume, music and movement.
Handmade Productions. Communities coming together to create ambitious outdoor art and shared public celebrations.
Durham Miners' Gala. Collective identities and shared histories represented through large scale textile art.
Walk With Us draws inspiration from a rich tradition of processional art: public events in which communities represent themselves through banners, music, costume, performance and collective movement.
The five new banners will draw on the tradition of Durham Miners’ Gala march banners, using collective textile-making to tell stories of migration, belonging and place.
The project builds on Leeds’s experience of welcoming Little Amal and the long-established cultural presence of Leeds West Indian Carnival, while looking to ambitious examples of community and civic procession including Le Magma, Jeremy Deller’s Procession, Handmade Productions and A Reet Northern Parade. Together, these references show how many different communities, identities and art forms can come together in one shared civic celebration.
Walk With Us will be created with communities rather than presented to them. Four groups connected through Being You Leeds will take part alongside Mafwa Theatre’s Art Club, working with five Leeds-based textile artists to develop five original banners.
Chapel FM’s Next Generation Radio will work with communities to create a sonic identity for the procession. Handmade Productions will lead collaborative making activity for large-scale processional artworks, while Leeds Museums and Galleries will connect participants with the city’s textile, protest and banner collections and explore opportunities to display the completed work.
Mafwa is also partnering with Good Chance through Stage Door 11, creating a paid traineeship for someone with experience of forced displacement and bringing additional skills and lived experience into the development of the project.
Letters of Support
Walk With Us is supported by organisations working across Leeds’s cultural, community, education and wellbeing sectors, alongside a national partner experienced in participatory arts and supporting displaced artists.
Select a letter below to view it in full.
Walk With Us will be delivered through Mafwa Theatre’s established safeguarding, safer spaces and health and safety procedures, with additional planning for the practical requirements of a large public procession through Leeds city centre.
The full project risk register sets out the risks identified, the measures that will be put in place to reduce them and the contingency planning that will guide delivery.
