Today, we ran a one-off special of our Art Club at the Migration Museum, based at The Workshop in Lambeth.
The museum highlights some key moments around migration in Britain.
Given the recent history with regards to Syrian refugees and the resistance that the government has had to accommodating them, it was amazing to see how Britain has changed from welcoming refugees during the Second World War to now shunning them.
There have been many stories recently about Syrians drowning falling from boats, including the famous one of the child washed up on the beach. This is the horror of migration of a totally different kind.
So it was great today to be able to use the Art Club to work with Sue from the museum, who explained wonderfully how to make the origami paper boats for us to decorate.
Human migration has being going on since the beginning of the human race and boats have played a huge part in that. However, refugees are different, they didn’t choose to risk their lives on a boat.
They were forced to flee and leave everything they had in their lives behind by the actions of others, some the very people who choose now to refuse them humanity.
We could choose to build, together, boats of humanity, as we are all the same human beings and refugees need different boats to the ones they have to take.
Philip Dodson 