Helen and Sam's Story

“I remember being in the fourth and the fifth grade, and being obsessed with this little fantasy of me being a transfer student from England…”

Helen’s friend Sam never quite felt at home in the country he was born in, America. He left in search of a place to belong, and found Berlin. But after nine years spent there, is Berlin home to him? What does ‘home’ even mean? In this episode, Helen and Sam ask this question.

You can find the transcript for this episode here.

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Over the past year, during the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve been working with a group of people from all over the world, teaching them to podcast and helping them to tell personal stories about the experience of moving from one place to another. Everyone who took part was brand new to podcasting, and most of the episodes were made without any professional equipment, using mobile phones and free editing software. The results of this course are seven episodes: each one about a very different migration experience, and each person bringing their own style and personality. We hope you love them as much as we do.

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Helen Shutt is a writer and theatre practitioner currently based in Glasgow. She is in the final year of a PhD experimenting with ways of co-authoring with the audience in performance as a means of creating community. Outside of her research she has facilitated participatory drama workshops with a variety of organisations and communities both locally and internationally, including collaborative projects in India (ThinkArts), Malawi (Theatre for a Change) and Sierra Leone (Timap for Justice).

Sam is a writer and English Language teacher originally from Washington State, USA. After leaving the USA and living in nine countries around the world, he moved to Berlin, his home of nine years. Shortly after being interviewed for this episode, he moved back in the United States. He then accepted a teaching job in Kurdistan, where he is now living.

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