Facilitation · Story Compound
Asylum Queens
“I helped the team write a story that reflects the realities of the asylum process”
The challenge
A television love story needed the asylum system to feel real without reducing migrant characters to trauma
Asylum Queens is a love story between two migrants who meet at a women’s centre in Blackpool. Writing migration for television creates a difficult balance: legal and bureaucratic realities need to be credible, but characters can become little more than vehicles for suffering if every storyline is organised around victimhood. The production wanted informed advice on the asylum process and the mental-health pressures it can create.
What we did
Research on asylum and mental health was brought directly into the writers’ room
Open Routes Research joined Story Compound’s writers’ room and advised on asylum procedures, waiting, uncertainty, accommodation, institutional encounters and the mental-health effects of navigating the system. The work drew on years of qualitative research with people seeking sanctuary while remaining focused on what writers needed: how systems shape everyday choices, relationships, conflict and character development.
What changed
Research evidence fed into character and story development before the series reached production
The consultancy helped the team ground the story in the realities people encounter while seeking asylum, while keeping love, humour, agency and ordinary life present alongside distress. It demonstrates a different route for research impact: placing specialist knowledge inside a creative process while stories are still being formed.
Outputs
Multi episode script for an upcoming TV drama