This commission aims to bring awareness to the notion that sometimes distance and hard times can make us stronger and believe in ourselves a bit more… through difficult times you are better able to understand life and fight for a brighter future.

The following poem and song reflects where my cousin and I are currently up to in life, myself in Liverpool and Alan starting anew in Germany as a musician and singer.




About Nesrin


Nesrin Yousef


Nesrin Yousef is Kurdish and from Syria. She has been in Liverpool since 2009 and lives with her husband and 3 children.

She started volunteering with SOLA Arts in 2013 doing creative activities with families and children and has been involved in Festival 31 on a voluntary basis since it began in 2014. Using arts and crafts she helps children from schools across Liverpool better understand her culture and those of other refugees. Nesrin has also worked with other artists from refugee backgrounds along with internationally recognised Photographer Howard Davies, adapting his images of displaced people as part of a school project.

As well as being very interested in cultural sharing, Nesrin is a qualified interpreter in 4 languages and loves to do arts and crafts activities with families.

Her most recent creative endeavours have been with SOLA & Rare Studios, a partnership brought together for the European funded ‘Imagine In’ arts project for children from refugee families. She is also involved in another partnership, this one between SOLA and the Everyman & Playhouse Theatres, engaging families from refugee backgrounds within theatre and the arts.

This micro-commission is Nesrin’s first experience of delivering artwork to the public and exploring her artistic self. She has been inspired to develop her creative capacity more in the future.


YouTube: Alan Botani

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