In the Spring of 2019, I flew to Greece with the amazing Cansu Karabiyik from Laugh4Change, to spend time with Chios Peoples’ Kitchen and the Chios Eastern Shore Response Team. We wanted to spotlight the refugee crisis, whilst shedding light on the incredible work volunteers in Chios do. According to the UNHCR, as of January 2019, 70.8 million people are displaced worldwide. I can’t really express here all the emotions that I saw and felt during the week I spent filming - so much frustration and injustice and fear, but also so much resilience and determination and hope.

While filming in a Language Centre, run by CESRT, I made friends with ‘M’, a student (the organisation prefers this to the potentially dehumanising ‘refugee’). He was rather preoccupied, spending his time building a boat. He wanted me to film, so I did. It took me a year to work out what to do with the footage, but finally ‘The Next Boat’ emerged, thanks to the stunning music by Ben Nobuto and poster design by Cait Mack.

In this film, I really I wanted to capture the atmosphere of timelessness that I felt whilst filming 'M'. A refugee's life is one of motion and precarity: journeys fill the memories of yesterday and the fears of tomorrow. And yet, for the hour or so that I spent with 'M', time and space centred on his boat. My experience with Street photography and Portrait photography helped extensively in this approach: for that one hour, I was allowed a glimpse into the world of ‘M’, and I attempted to capture that as best I could. I also wanted to explore themes of voyeurism and the place of the camera in covering the migrant crisis, and the resistance to picture refugees as anything other than victims. 'M' was so much more than that, and so for four minutes, I wanted to spend time with him, building his boat.

The advert for the charities, meanwhile, became a mini-documentary of sorts. Out of everything I’ve worked on, I’ve never had a harder time staying behind the camera - so much of me wanted to help lift boxes or hand out food or even just offer a hug. I hope the video I’ve made makes up for it.

I’ll leave it to the amazing CESRT volunteers to finish: 'I want my friends and people back home to understand that these people are people, they're like people like you and me… They grew up in nice neighbourhoods and sent their kids to nice schools and wanted the best for their families… We are not better or different, we were just lucky that we were not in the same country when the war started - and we can be in their position, in one day.'