My Name is Not Refugee: 1

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In fact it is very simple, every bit of the art work is drawn with a pencil so that each image has three or four drawings, one for each colour like a lithograph or a screen print. My name is not Refugee’ has been curated by Elizabeth Curry, Münevver Gülsen Ülker, Samia, Diego Robirosa and Mr and Mrs Al-Chahin, working together with many more clients of and volunteers from Refugee Action Colchester, a voluntary organisation working with refugees, asylum seekers and people with no access to public funds. On the contrary, I believe she has succeeded in shedding light at a situation that is absolutely horrific and nightmarish and giving us a glimpse at how parents with children deal with it. It made me feel lucky because I was happy that I didn’t have to move away from home and I wasn’t a refugee. The artists featured in this exhibition are: Jananne Al-Ani, Adrian Berg, Zarina Bhimji, Christine Borland, Mark Boulos, Lisa Cheung, David Connearn, Diana Cumming, Adam Dade, Jimmie Durham, Leila Faithfull, Elsie Few, Buckminster Fuller, Anya Gallaccio, Charles Ginner, Duncan Grant, Lucy Gunning, Graham Gussin, Allan Gwynne-Jones, Sonia Hanney, Mona Hatoum, Emma Kay, John Kippin, Richard Long, Rachel Lowe, Iain MacMillan, Mike Marshall, David Nash, Mariele Neudecker, Winifred Nicholson, Jacques Nimki, Hirsch Perlman, Ingrid Pollard, Kathy Prendergast, Margaret Fisher Prout, David Robbiliard, Claude Rogers, Shimabuku, David Shrigley , Imogen Stidworthy, Rowland Suddaby, Mark Titchner, Gee Vaucher, Hubert Wellington, Rachel Whiteread, Chris Wilson and Richard Woods.

This links nicely into my next question, which relates to this article from The Bookseller, in which My Name is Not Refugee is in fact mentioned. They have often proven of immense value to myself and the dual appeal of texts like this to both adult and child cannot be ignored. This book may be aimed at children, but I believe the words and content are so powerful in their simplicity that even adults would do well to read this. The rapid changes in the political make-up in our world is rippling through nations and is impacting of all us. Children’s books offer a channel to touch on these subjects in the way which is safe and pitched appropriately.No one wants to be in their shoes, and no one thinks they'll ever be put in that situation until they find themselves in it. Some of the most powerful spreads in the book show great scenes beyond the text; swathes of tents in the distant, or a host of people sleeping on mats on the floor. This just comes to show that readers’ interpretations sometimes diverge from what the picturebook maker intended, and that each reading experience is unique. This would be a fantastic book to read to children to make them think about the difficulties refugee children have to face. In terms of the implied reader, we felt that children reading this would need to have a prior knowledge of what a refugee is and what this terminology means.

Kate Milner’s My Name is Not Refugee is a beautifully-illustrated story that explains the refugee crisis in a touching and accessible way. Discover a new view of life in Britain, in an exhibition of artworks chosen by a group of refugees and asylum seekers living in Colchester.

The following learning activitiesare divided into sections, each of which takes between 15 and 30 minutes. Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives. My Name is Not Refugee is an incredibly powerful picture book aimed at both children and kids alike. See landscape paintings, video, sculpture, ceramics and photography that inspire a different way of thinking, alongside scents that are familiar in the regions from which the group have travelled.