Belonging: Voices of London's Refugees, Museum of London
If you travel on a London bus these days, the onboard entertainment comes in a soundscape of voices speaking in many different languages. The chattering cacophony can at times baffle fellow passengers, but it can also be uplifting because it reflects the vibrancy of a multicultural city.
Something of this lively Babel on wheels is captured in a temporary exhibition at the Museum of London. Belonging: Voices of London's Refugees has been created in partnership with the Refugee Communities History Project, which includes 15 refugee community groups. The exhibition draws on more than 150 interviews with people who have sought sanctuary in London over the past 70 years.
The exhibition has a challenging brief. How can you attempt to represent the heritage, experiences and emotions of people from countries all over the world, ranging from young children to ex-guerrilla fighters, who were forced to flee their homelands for different reasons? How do you convey the bureaucratic and social difficulties they faced on their arrival in London? How do you show the contributions these refugees are making to our society?
To give such disparate topics some structure, the displays are broken down into four themes: Families, Communities, London, and the World, each with its own free-standing 'pavilion'. Between these pavilions a route is marked out with showcases and video screens set into low walls.
The overall feeling is one of free-flowing openness, where at one side of the gallery schoolchildren lie sprawled on mats, busily drawing on worksheets, and at the other side older visitors study a detailed timeline of world events that have caused refugees to come to Britain.
The four themes sometimes struggle to remain apparent. This may be the fault of some of the accompanying text. It is nicely designed and carefully written, but is peppered with headings such as Loss and Reunion, Values, Longing, Complexity, Support, and Impact, which can cause readers to lose track of the main topic.
It is more likely that the extraordinary stories at the core of the exhibition are inevitably going to burst out of their shackles, no matter how well contrived those shackles are. The show is after all about real people describing their unique and sometimes horrifying experiences as refugees. None of them fit neatly into pigeon-holes of our making.
Once visitors abandon efforts to follow the themes they are free to concentrate on the people. In each pavilion there are tables where visitors sit with headphones to select different extracts from interviews. Corresponding text gives the background to each interviewee, and photographs help to build up an image of these men and women as they once were and as they are now.
The voices cover many ages and cultures. An elderly Jewish woman describes how much it meant to be able to bring her story books with her when she left Nazi Germany as a child on one of the Kindertransports in 1939. A Bosnian who came to London from Sarajevo in 1994 at the age of seven tells us that, despite achieving a degree from Oxford, he still feels like 'the underdog in an endless football match'.
Appropriately, refugees who speak only their own language are not over-dubbed in English. Translations are available on laminated sheets, although in some cases these are fixed too close to the tables for comfortable reading. The interviews have been archived by the Museum of London and extracts can be heard online.
An ambient soundtrack runs in each pavilion, so snatches of voices ebb and flow throughout the open gallery. Some visitors may find it distracting, although without this background buzz the gallery would lack life.
Works of art and poems fill the walls. It has obviously not been easy to weave these into the thematic threads of the exhibition, but some of the juxtapositions are telling. Two paintings by a Somali refugee show the simple shapes of trees and figures, one in bright equatorial light, one a soft brown and pink desert sunset. The artist has recreated an idealised dream of the land he has left behind for himself.
In contrast, Charred Landscape by a refugee from Eritrea is precisely that - a dark slab of rutted mud and debris, portraying an aerial view of his home in the aftermath of destructive bombing raids. These two men have chosen to preserve very different memories of their former homelands.
This is not an overtly didactic exhibition, but effective use is made of facts and statistics that counteract common misconceptions about refugees and asylum seekers. These are incorporated in on-screen interactive quizzes, on graphics wrapping around showcases, and under lift-up flaps designed to appeal to children.
Visitors' comments are displayed on the wall. One reads: 'As a Briton, I ended up feeling isolated and "one removed". Was this the curator's intention?' Parts of the content may seem 'foreign', but few visitors could fail to be moved by the stories behind some of the everyday objects on display.
They include a leather jacket worn by an Algerian who escaped to the UK in 1994 with only his passport and the clothes he stood up in; the National Vocational Qualification certificate awarded to an Afghan schoolteacher who has had to swap her former teaching career for hairdressing; and a blanket brought to London 15 years ago by an Ethiopian refugee, who kept it because 'it gave me comfort when I was lonely and a stranger'.
The exhibition ends with a simple statement: 'There is too little knowledge of why people flee and the challenges they face; too little respect for their courage and the contributions they make to society. We can only move forward if we take the time to listen.'
Taking the time to listen to the voices in this exhibition brings a new-found admiration for the many thousands of refugees - not just those in London - who, for whatever reason, have had to carve out new lives for themselves far away from home.
Penny Ritchie Calder is a writer and consultant
www.refugeestories.org
Project data
Main funders: Heritage Lottery Fund, City Parochial Foundation, Trust for London, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council/Renaissance, Home Office, Pears Foundation
Exhibition design: In-house
Graphics production and build: Blueprint
Film production: Milo Creative, Adams Trainor
Exhibition ends: 25 February
If you travel on a London bus these days, the onboard entertainment comes in a soundscape of voices speaking in many different languages. The chattering cacophony can at times baffle fellow passengers, but it can also be uplifting because it reflects the vibrancy of a multicultural city.
Something of this lively Babel on wheels is captured in a temporary exhibition at the Museum of London. Belonging: Voices of London's Refugees has been created in partnership with the Refugee Communities History Project, which includes 15 refugee community groups. The exhibition draws on more than 150 interviews with people who have sought sanctuary in London over the past 70 years.
The exhibition has a challenging brief. How can you attempt to represent the heritage, experiences and emotions of people from countries all over the world, ranging from young children to ex-guerrilla fighters, who were forced to flee their homelands for different reasons? How do you convey the bureaucratic and social difficulties they faced on their arrival in London? How do you show the contributions these refugees are making to our society?
To give such disparate topics some structure, the displays are broken down into four themes: Families, Communities, London, and the World, each with its own free-standing 'pavilion'. Between these pavilions a route is marked out with showcases and video screens set into low walls.
The overall feeling is one of free-flowing openness, where at one side of the gallery schoolchildren lie sprawled on mats, busily drawing on worksheets, and at the other side older visitors study a detailed timeline of world events that have caused refugees to come to Britain.
The four themes sometimes struggle to remain apparent. This may be the fault of some of the accompanying text. It is nicely designed and carefully written, but is peppered with headings such as Loss and Reunion, Values, Longing, Complexity, Support, and Impact, which can cause readers to lose track of the main topic.
It is more likely that the extraordinary stories at the core of the exhibition are inevitably going to burst out of their shackles, no matter how well contrived those shackles are. The show is after all about real people describing their unique and sometimes horrifying experiences as refugees. None of them fit neatly into pigeon-holes of our making.
Once visitors abandon efforts to follow the themes they are free to concentrate on the people. In each pavilion there are tables where visitors sit with headphones to select different extracts from interviews. Corresponding text gives the background to each interviewee, and photographs help to build up an image of these men and women as they once were and as they are now.
The voices cover many ages and cultures. An elderly Jewish woman describes how much it meant to be able to bring her story books with her when she left Nazi Germany as a child on one of the Kindertransports in 1939. A Bosnian who came to London from Sarajevo in 1994 at the age of seven tells us that, despite achieving a degree from Oxford, he still feels like 'the underdog in an endless football match'.
Appropriately, refugees who speak only their own language are not over-dubbed in English. Translations are available on laminated sheets, although in some cases these are fixed too close to the tables for comfortable reading. The interviews have been archived by the Museum of London and extracts can be heard online.
An ambient soundtrack runs in each pavilion, so snatches of voices ebb and flow throughout the open gallery. Some visitors may find it distracting, although without this background buzz the gallery would lack life.
Works of art and poems fill the walls. It has obviously not been easy to weave these into the thematic threads of the exhibition, but some of the juxtapositions are telling. Two paintings by a Somali refugee show the simple shapes of trees and figures, one in bright equatorial light, one a soft brown and pink desert sunset. The artist has recreated an idealised dream of the land he has left behind for himself.
In contrast, Charred Landscape by a refugee from Eritrea is precisely that - a dark slab of rutted mud and debris, portraying an aerial view of his home in the aftermath of destructive bombing raids. These two men have chosen to preserve very different memories of their former homelands.
This is not an overtly didactic exhibition, but effective use is made of facts and statistics that counteract common misconceptions about refugees and asylum seekers. These are incorporated in on-screen interactive quizzes, on graphics wrapping around showcases, and under lift-up flaps designed to appeal to children.
Visitors' comments are displayed on the wall. One reads: 'As a Briton, I ended up feeling isolated and "one removed". Was this the curator's intention?' Parts of the content may seem 'foreign', but few visitors could fail to be moved by the stories behind some of the everyday objects on display.
They include a leather jacket worn by an Algerian who escaped to the UK in 1994 with only his passport and the clothes he stood up in; the National Vocational Qualification certificate awarded to an Afghan schoolteacher who has had to swap her former teaching career for hairdressing; and a blanket brought to London 15 years ago by an Ethiopian refugee, who kept it because 'it gave me comfort when I was lonely and a stranger'.
The exhibition ends with a simple statement: 'There is too little knowledge of why people flee and the challenges they face; too little respect for their courage and the contributions they make to society. We can only move forward if we take the time to listen.'
Taking the time to listen to the voices in this exhibition brings a new-found admiration for the many thousands of refugees - not just those in London - who, for whatever reason, have had to carve out new lives for themselves far away from home.
Penny Ritchie Calder is a writer and consultant
www.refugeestories.org
Project data
Main funders: Heritage Lottery Fund, City Parochial Foundation, Trust for London, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council/Renaissance, Home Office, Pears Foundation
Exhibition design: In-house
Graphics production and build: Blueprint
Film production: Milo Creative, Adams Trainor
Exhibition ends: 25 February
