Through collaboration with Refugee Week and My Journey, seven migrants to London have produced illustrations to share their journeys as refugees through their own eyes.
Pleasantly surprised about the varying formats, lengths and most importantly message. Thought I knew what I was in store for, but the underlying message of getting “swallowed up” by the new home city and the length of the post-immigration struggles caught me off-guard.
We’ve embedded them below where you can click for full screen reading, with the exclusion of the single panel up top from N. N. Dee.
Worth noting that this isn’t a one-off for My Journey either, who are a project run through the Migrants Resource Centre, dedicated to multimedia storytelling. Through photography, film, radio and comics they help train migrants in the art, and help share their stories without preaching or pushing opinions. Check them out here: http://www.my-journey.org.uk
Seven Londoners hailing from five different continents have created comic strips about their experiences as migrants.
Several of the illustrated stories, which are being released during Refugee Week, show the experience of fleeing to England or living in the UK as a refugee.
The seven migrants, whose backgrounds range from Syrian to Venezuelan, made the strips during workshops run by artist Lindsay Pollock for My Journey, a migrant storytelling project run by Migrants Resource Centre and funded by the City Bridge Trust. Pollock is co-creator of the illustrated series Meet the Somalis and part of Positive Negatives (www.positivenegatives.org), which creates comics about social and human rights issues.
Poignant and surprising, personal and political, the stories that emerged are windows into the diverse lives of migrants in London at a time when they are increasingly dehumanised in public debate.