Tag: humans

Boats of humanity

Posted on by philipdodson

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.

Get closer

Posted on by philipdodson

Hating someone based on the mass media and what the voice of the establishment says is easy. You don’t know those people and therefore it is not personal. It is easy to get sucked into the dehumanising of vast numbers of faceless people and to join in.

The politicians and media have created a hate-fueled polarised society where we have to choose sides, good vs evil etc, where everything has been oversimplified and we are only present an either/or. Life is full of many shades and many different options and views than just two.

If we get closer to people and get to know them, it is more often difficult to hate them as they become the real people who are perhaps work colleagues, neighbours and so on.

Perhaps if we only ever made our evaluations based on our own individual personal life experiences the world be less hateful and vastly better.

Hate is sold easily when it’s not personal or even real.

Real people matter and the closer we get to all of our fellow humans regardless of who they are, the closer we get to solving our differences and seeing things differently.



Today’s blog is inspired by the fab new book by Brene Brown ‘Braving the wilderness’. If you have not yet seen or read her work, she is a life-changing professor and author.