In the run up to Christmas 2018, the Law Clinic’s Immigration Unit (IU) was invited to deliver a forum theatre session on asylum interviews to a group of third year social work students at Glasgow Caledonian University.

The IU ran two back-to-back sessions, with each session being delivered to an audience of 25 participants.

The session starts with a fictionalised asylum interview based on real law clinic cases, followed by an examination and deconstruction of the interview through audience participation. 

These interactive sessions aim to highlight the challenges faced by destitute asylum seekers when progressing their cases, and in particular, the credibility issues that hound their cases relentlessly.

The sessions were very well received. The audience quickly got into the spirit of forum theatre by raising their hands and stopping the interview when they saw an issue or problem. The braver amongst them got the chance to ‘jump in’ and re-enact the scene as they thought it ideally should have been acted out.