REFUGEE WEEK 2017 AT THE V&A MUSEUM OF CHILDHOOD
We started off with a choral performance and interactive art installations, followed by short documentary projects made in the UK addressing child migration, and conclude with videos made by displaced Syrian teenage girls and the award-winning documentary “The First Movie” filmed in Kurdish Iraq.
The day was in partnership with Queen Mary University of London, and included speakers from the International Rescue Committee, Poetry for Peace and Refugees in Our Eyes projects, refugee mental health services, and the producer of “The First Movie.”
REFUGEE WEEK EVENT AT V&A MUSEUM OF CHILDHOOD
Saturday 24 June 2017
12.00 – 18.45
Performance and interactive art installations: 12:00 onwards
Choral Performance on the Marble Floor
12.00 – 12.30 Woven Gold Choir from the Helen Bamber Foundation supported by Praxis
Kazzum Kubes Playful Theatre in Unusual Places
Interactive installation created with young refugees and asylum seekers from Shrepsa, Young Roots, Refugee Council, Caras and Brighter Futures.
Participatory Art activity
Print making installation – ‘what makes a home?’
Film Programme Part I: 13.00 to 15.10
13.00 – 13.40 Where is home?
Two films exploring feelings of home by refugee children who have arrived in the UK from the Kindertransport scheme in the 1930s and 1940s to the present refugeecrisis today. Screenings followed by discussion with artist Janetka Platun and Eithne Nightingale and Mitchell Harris from Child Migrant Stories.
13.40 – 14.00 Refugees In Our Eyes / Poetry for Peace
A short film and poem made by young people in the UK in response to the plight of refugees. Followed by discussion with Suzanne Cohen, film-maker, and some of the young people involved.
14.10 – 15.10 The ‘Child Migrant Stories: Voices Past and Present’
Introduced by Eithne Nightingale
Life is a Destiny – about how Argun Imamzade rescued his family’s photo album from his bombed out house in Cyprus followed by Argun in conversation with Eithne Nightingale.
Passing Tides – about how Linh Vu escaped Vietnam by boat with her father followed by Linh in conversation with Eithne Nightingale.
Film Programme Part II: 15.30 to 18.45
15.30 – 16.30 ‘Another Kind of Girl Collective’
Another Kind of Girl Collective is a media arts collective that equips Syrian teenage girls in the midst of displacement with the creative and technical means to explore and articulate their inner worlds and daily lives through film and photography. Followed by discussion with Mehreen Jaswal, International Rescue Committee
16.45 – 18.00 Screening of Mark Cousin’s Film ‘The First Movie’
What’s it like to be a child in war – not when the conflict is raging, but when the war tide is out, as it were, when kids are telling stories or playing games? The First Movie is about the “not-war”.
18.00 – 18.45 Panel discussion
Eithne Nightingale – researcher into child migration, QMUL and filmmaker of Child Migrant Stories
Gill Parry – Producer of ‘The First Movie’
Mehreen Jaswal – Adolescent Girls Programme Specialist, International Rescue Committee
Dr Susannah Fairweather – Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Refugee Service, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust
Watch Talk Think 