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Canterbury Cathedral's moon VR hopes to reveal struggles of refugees

By: Oliver Kemp

Published: 06:00, 04 December 2019

An ancient building might be the last place you expect to find the latest cutting edge technology.

But in Canterbury Cathedral this week, guests are being invited to take part in a virtual reality experience which puts you on the moon.

Oliver Kemp went to the cathedral to find out more

Sporting a headset, headphones and hand controllers, guests are guided through a five minute story as they come to grips with an unfamiliar, alien environment.

The Canterbury diocese, who have installed the event in the cathedral's St Augustine Chapel, hopes it will make people think about how it feels for refugees to be displaced from their homes. According to Amnesty International there are currently 25.9 million refugees globally, the highest level ever recorded.

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The charity Christian Aid developed the video and donated it to the diocese, and will also be appearing at St Mary's Church in Ashford and St Martin's Church in Maidstone throughout December.

During the experience you can walk around your new home and pick objects up surrounding you, with the aid of a friendly robot helper.

Participants find themselves on the moon in an unfamiliar environment

As the experience ends, the safety of your new environment is thrown dramatically into doubt.

Rev Dr Jonathan Arnold hopes the high-tech event will encourage participants to think carefully about the difficult experiences refugees face when being forced to leave their war-torn and dangerous countries.

He said:"What it tries to engender in the person who is experiencing it is that sense of displacement, that sense of being away from home, that sense of being lost."

"Our refugee officers here work with Syrian families or those who've travelled from the Middle East or Africa, and they've lost their homes, their families, their loved ones, their money, and they're trying to find a better life."

Domenica Pecoraro, refugee projects officer for the diocese, worries there is a lack of empathy for people who have to go through this difficult experience.

The state-of-the-art experience is described as 'immersive'

She said: "We're all the same, and because this happens to people who are from another country and speak another language, it doesn't mean it doesn't happen to us.

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"If we allow war and persecution, if we allow forced displacement to happen to other people, then we allow it to happen to us.

"To our brothers, to our sisters, to our mums."

Mrs Pecoraro has also helped organise community events such as Home, which linked mums from Ashford and Syrian migrants through a series of art workshops.

The project culminated in an art exhibition at The Beaney Museum and Gallery, displaying the art the women and children had created together.

Domenica Pecoraro works with refugees from Syrian, Iraq and Iran who are living in Kent

Liz Flynn helped organise the project and said the early sessions had some challenges.

She said: "The Syrian women spoke Arabic and the English women didn't speak any Arabic, so we had a translator to support us throughout all the workshops.

"So they started to use symbols and signs to gesture what needed to be done. And then the English woman started to learn some words in Arabic."

Read more: All the latest news from Canterbury

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