📣 Refugee Week 2026 Theme Announcement: COURAGE The word courage comes from the Latin cor, meaning “heart.” 👉Read here: https://t.co/fQ9IFJ6NYS

Co-commissioned and co-produced by @CounterArts and @balticgateshead for @RefugeeWeek 2025 with support from @moomin Characters Ltd. celebrating 80 years since the first Moomin story by Tove Jansson. With support from @FinInst_UK_IRL

We’ll celebrate with wildflower head garlands around our majestic roots, with music, dance, food, storytelling and poetry as part of To Own Both Nothing And The Whole World, an installation at Baltic Gateshead by Henna Asikainen and Roua Horanieh.

Foraging and gathering wildflowers for our midsummer night tomorrow from 4pm to 9pm at Baltic Square. Baltic Photos by Colin Davison @colindavisonphotography

@CounterArts @balticgateshead @RefugeeWeek @moomin @FinInst_UK_IRL @HowickHall

Co-commissioned and co-produced by @CounterArts and @balticgateshead for @RefugeeWeek 2025 with support from @moomin Characters Ltd. celebrating 80 years since the first Moomin story by Tove Jansson. With support from the @FinInst_UK_IRL

To Own Both Nothing And The Whole World is an istallation by Henna Assikainen and Roua Horanieh.

Join us for midsummer night on June 21 to celebrate and honour nature, local communities and their stories as the superpowers they are. There will be a talk by artists/makers Henna Asikainen and Roua Horanieh, followed by music, dance, creative workshops, food and storytelling.

It’s easy to identify with these roots; perhaps because nature grounds us in a shared sense of belonging—to everything, and everywhere.

Without the soil that once nourished and held them upright, the roots stand as quiet witnesses: to the passage of time, to nature’s resilience and wisdom, to beauty shaped by adversity. There is something both humbling and majestic in their presence that invites reflection.

Caked in mud, clay, and sand, the roots were carefully and lovingly cleaned, gradually revealing their intricate forms—bends, twists, and scars that tell their story.

Uprooted tree roots felt like a profoundly fitting metaphor for the themes of displacement and belonging—across both human and more-than-human worlds—that To Own Both Nothing and the Whole World seeks to explore.

During the Napoleonic Wars, oaks were planted across the country to supply timber for the Royal Navy. Two of these oaks, planted in the gardens of Howick Hall, survived for over two centuries before being uprooted by recent storms.

With the generous support of Howick Hall Gardens & Arboretum, Clarty Commandos Forest School, and many helping hands along the way.

This year’s Refugee Week theme, Community as a Superpower, resonates deeply with the spirit of the project. It was the superpower of a community that came together to bring these 1.5-tonne roots to their temporary new home.

These two oak roots have found their home on Baltic square, here for the duration of Refugee Week, and forming part of the To Own Both Nothing and the Whole World exhibition that continues inside the gallery.

Co-commissioned and co-produced by @CounterArts and @balticgateshead for @RefugeeWeek 2025 with support from @moomin Characters Ltd. celebrating 80 years since the first Moomin story by Tove Jansson. Photo credit @sayarosemedia

To Own Both Nothing And The Whole World is an installation by Henna Asikainen and Roua Horanieh at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead.

The tree is generously donated by @AlnwickGarden and brought to us by Alnwick Garden's Head Gardener Mikey Leach.

It feels both meaningful and hopeful to plant this tree in the Civic Centre Gardens, as part of Refugee Week, the Sanctuary Forum and our project To Own Both Nothing and The Whole World as a way to celebrate the enduring presence and impact of migration in the life of our city.