What are children taught about forced migration as they grow up? Which media influence them? And what kinds of stories and images shape their understanding? Just as importantly: what do children themselves think? How do they understand or imagine the experience of being displaced or becoming a refugee? And what impact can their voices have on how we all visualise, talk about and address forced migration, locally, nationally and globally?
Diana Forster’s art installation ‘Somewhere to Stay’ provides a valuable opportunity to engage young people in inclusive, reflective conversations on this complex topic – and to hear what they have to say. Our approach is informed by our wider research into children’s voices on war and peace, and we are working closely with the educational charity Never Such Innocence to run schools workshops and give children opportunities to create art, poetry, speeches and songs that reflect what they have learnt and what they want to communicate.
All around the world, young people’s childhoods are saturated in imagery, narratives and experiences of war and its aftermath. By 2019, 1.6 billion children were living in a country affected by conflict (that is 69% of children globally). As well as direct violence, they suffer follow-on impacts such as famine, sexual abuse, disruption to education and displacement. Meanwhile, children living far from battlefields absorb stories of war and its many legacies via popular culture, museums, news and educational resources; stories curated largely by adults, which condition how they engage with conflict and its aftermath as they mature. Despite the multiple ways in which children are exposed to conflict from a young age, they are usually not seen as worth including in discussions of war’s impact or prevention.
This is largely true of discussions of forced displacement too; despite many children becoming forced migrants themselves, it is often assumed that only adults are ‘expert’ enough to comment authoritatively on it or make meaningful contributions to policy-making. The inclusive, child-oriented journalism of publications like First News represents an encouraging counter-example, for instance here and here. For some powerful child-centred storytelling on the topic of forced displacement, we strongly recommend Dina Nayeri’s book The Waiting Place, which is the basis of a successful school outreach project. UNICEF’s Unfairy Tales use animation to narrate three true stories of child refugees.
As with our wider work on war and peace, we are keen to explore a range of empowering mechanisms – all involving different kinds of storytelling, in a range of different media – that understand children as children but also recognise and centre their expertise on this challenging topic. Working with Diana Forster’s new artwork Somewhere to Stay, we encourage learning about different histories of forced migration, while helping the young people we engage with to develop awareness of their agency in shaping how we all visualise and address forced migration in future.
You can find out more about our schools workshops here, and we will share a range of young people’s reflections on forced migration as our project develops.
Raw Old Scars
I have witnessed the worldIn all its twisted forms.I find that now,After a lifetime,The cold makes me sweat. Icy, unlit trains slapMy face when I touchCold metal. And sweat drips heavy on my nose – Once small. I often wonder whyI was forced to crawl,Back spiked by foreign fencesTo nibble like a rabbit on tasteless leaves. And, in honesty,I wonder… Read More
Barbed
Barbed brick holds up the sky,About as inviting as a rat.Grey and hard, it lacks a rat’s Softness and yet, we placedA welcome mat over the threshold. Each day we were trooped into the clusteredFirs and pines, stalwart and cold,Indignantly spitting bark in our facesAs we wrestled them to the ground. We called this our job,And… Read More
Listen, because I’m begging you to
Throughout history, we have always had some conquest in mind. Nation building, Russification, Sinicization Manifest Destiny, Colonialism: God gave me this land. We can sit and deliberate on left or right, west or east, us or them. But they are us, we are them we fight for separate similar goals. I hate them. Their always harming, always self-victimizing, taking, stealing, pillaging. They need to be stopped. It makes me want to join It makes me want to… Read More
It was then, could be now
It was then, could be now, the people were taken, put on set tracks hurtling towards an abyss. First came the camps. That old Russian tradition, much more macro than Russia. they were forced to work, not as those valued cogs, but as the train wheels pushed forward, out of their control. Then the most divine of comedies. The old oppressor, now a ‘friend’, and a new home approaching… Read More
The power of comics
‘With reports suggesting that there could be 25 million to 1 billion climate refugees by 2050, it is critical that this topic is discussed at all levels and in all places – by young people as well as adults. Therefore, I developed a comic story focusing on a young climate refugee in rural Bangladesh, one… Read More
Colour in a comic
In 2022, a group of University of St Andrews undergraduate students developed a research project looking at different approaches to peace education, as part of some wider research into the forces that shape past and present habits of visualising peace. While team members Joe Walker, Margaux de Seze and Otilia Meden compared school curricula, newspapers… Read More
Schools Workshops
We are collaborating with the educational charity Never Such Innocence to run a series of free schools workshops in connection with our exhibitions. See below for more details of past workshops; we aim to run more in Glasgow (2024) and Falkirk (2025). If you work in a school and would like to explore other opportunities to engage… Read More