Counterpoints Arts is a UK-based national organization working at the intersection of arts, migration, and social change. With a deeply collaborative, artist-led approach, they center the creativity and leadership of people with lived experience of displacement—working to shift narratives, institutions, and cultural landscapes.
From Refugee Week, now the largest arts and culture festival celebrating the contributions of refugees—to grassroots mentorship, DJ collectives, and national advocacy work, Counterpoints brings a unique blend of systems thinking and creative action. Their team builds lasting relationships across sectors, holding space for underrepresented artists while challenging institutions to transform.
As a proudly migrant-led team, Counterpoints works from the understanding that migration is not a peripheral issue; it’s foundational to how culture is made and remade. They move from this truth with care, integrity, and vision, even as their staff and collaborators navigate deep personal and collective trauma.
“The emotional and relational demands of our work continue to grow. Lumos offers a framework that both supports others but helps us hold ourselves in the process. It resonates with our core values – care, equity, collaboration. We need this kind of capacity-building initiative in order to meet the scale of need across our network, while helping shape a cultural ecosystem that is healthier, more caring, more grounded and better able to support others.” – Counterpoints
Over the past few years, they’ve begun to ask hard questions: What does sustainability look like when the work is this urgent? How do we support those holding so much emotionally, relationally, and politically without burning out or breaking down? Their response has included building networks of mutual care, offering mental health support, and creating space for embodied reflection and long-view strategy.
They see the Lumos program as a rare opportunity to engage in healing-led, trauma-informed capacity building—something for which many in their ecosystem have long voiced a need.
We’re honored to be walking alongside Counterpoints as they continue to build a more just cultural future.
