These refugees came to Britain for safety. They found roller skates

“My name is John, and I am a skater.” That’s how one of our participants introduced himself at the end of our pilot session. Not “asylum seeker”. Not “refugee”. A skater. Part of something. Part of us. 

This is Skates4Mates, a grassroots project that offers people seeking sanctuary in the UK something
radical: joy, community and wheels. 

How it started 

When the UK voted to leave the EU in 2016, something shifted. If you were an immigrant (like me), you felt it – in the air, in the headlines, in the muttered comments on the bus. And if you were a person seeking asylum, already navigating trauma, fear and a mountain of paperwork, that shift had serious weight. The so-called “hostile environment”, cooked up by Theresa May and half-heartedly danced around by Boris Johnson, wasn’t just about border control. It was about everyday exclusion. I know because I once had to teach Johnson how to dance for the London 2012 Olympics. (Reader, he didn’t lead.) 

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We were promised a shiny new points-based immigration system, like the ones in Australia or Canada. Born and raised in the Yukon, I always believed Canada was friendlier than the UK.

So I took one of those online immigration quizzes to see if I’d qualify to move to Canada. You know, just hypothetically. I’m a 44-year-old mum with a dance degree and not much in the bank. Spoiler alert: I didn’t make the cut. Turns out, my best chance was either winning the lottery or being an elite sportsperson.

So, in my quest to qualify, I had to consider: in which sport could a 44-year-old mum with a dodgy hamstring, mild sciatica, and a deep mistrust of group activities rise to international greatness? That’s when I remembered Elizabeth Manley’s glorious silver medal in figure skating at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. Inspiring, yes, but I live in the UK, where ice is mostly reserved for gin and tonics. So I did the next logical thing: I bought a pair of roller skates.

This whole absurd process made me wonder: what kind of people are actually wanted? What does one need to do to deserve a visa? And how wildly lucky (or unlucky) it is, the roulette wheel of where you’re born. 

The immigration process feels deliberately exhausting, expensive and dehumanising. The system isn’t interested in your humour, your compassion, your Mastermind-level knowledge of 90s R&B. It wants proof of productivity. 

It’s not designed to help you move, but to wear you down until you give up. Once you’re here (if you’re lucky enough to get in), you are expected to assimilate, be grateful. Be ‘one of the good ones’.

I say all this as a white, English-speaking woman from a ‘nice’ country. I can’t even begin to fathom the extra hoops others have to jump through. So I started looking for the opposite of all that. Something built on welcome, something that is all about freedom of movement.

I’d been leading dance sessions with young people seeking sanctuary in hotels. A hotel manager once told me: “Out there, we can’t control what happens. But in here, we can offer joy.” 

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And joy, my friends, is a radical act. 

So I called Majid Dhana, poet, activist, co-founder of migrant-led arts group 432 Nomads. I pitched a pilot project: let’s try skating. His reply? “Just show up in skates. They’ll sign up.” 

He was right. Twenty people signed up in 30 minutes. 

They arrived in trainers. They left on wheels 

Week one: nerves. It took 90 minutes just to get skates on. We taught falling first. You’re going to fall. And when you do, skaters applaud your effort. We counted the steps in Arabic, Tigrinya, Farsi. They laughed at my pronunciation. 

By week two, they were arriving early. By week three, they were teaching each other. By week four, we were a crew. A Skatefam. 

No one needed to prove anything. No paperwork. No questions. Just music, movement, and the unspoken welcome of a shared wobble. And it isn’t therapy, but it is healing. 

The World Health Organization says integration works best when people seeking sanctuary and host communities share physical and creative activities. That’s exactly what skating is: public, visible, collective. Some came shy, heads down. Now they glide across car parks, coaching others. We cheer. We dance. We laugh. 

If this were a government scheme, there’d be forms, a multi-page Excel document that nobody reads. Not one had skated before but we were busy strapping on wheels and learning how to do the ‘crazy legs’.

100% said they felt more confident. 100% made new friends. 100% wanted to keep skating. 

Take that, bureaucracy. 

Now 60 people are on the waiting list. Cohort One teaches Cohort Two. Some are off to Roll On Festival 
in London. Several appear in Bad Immigrant, the show about borders and belonging that started it all. But most importantly, they’ve found a new identity. Not the one the system gives them. The one they choose. 

Skating doesn’t ask about your immigration status. It doesn’t care about your visa. It simply asks: “Do you want to skate?” 

This isn’t about saving anyone. It’s about offering something fun and freeing; something that feels human. 

The asylum process often treats people like paperwork. It doesn’t value kindness, humour or joy. But skating does.

Kindness gets skates on feet. Humour helps people fall without fear. Trust helps us get back up. And joy? Joy keeps us coming back. 

One of our crew told me: “Before this, I didn’t have a place.” Now he’s helping run sessions for others. 

And when they roll through town in bright pink Skates4Mates T-shirts, people smile. They move aside.
They cheer. These aren’t strangers. They’re skaters. 

As Majid put it: “Skating is a metaphor for migration. You’re adapting, learning, always moving forward.” 

Bad Immigrant by Jennifer Irons is on at the Edinburgh Fringe (Assembly George Square Studio 2) 18-24 August, before embarking on an autumn tour to UK Cities of Sanctuary. 

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