At present I am writing a chapter for the Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives, to be published imminently.  It is entitled: ‘Fostering empathy, or presenting refugees as victims, in need of “white saviours”? Reviewing recent middle grade/ young adult children’s literature about refugees.’

For the past 15 years I have been researching children’s literature about the refugee experience, identifying early on the exponential growth in books about this controversial subject as an “emergent genre” (Hope, 2008, pg.296).  By the time of the publication of my book “Children’s Literature about Refugees: A Catalyst in the Classroom” (Hope, 2017) I could include an appendix of 250 titles on the subject published in English in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and since then more titles are continually appearing, with several books achieving considerable notoriety in recent years.  Obviously, the theme is topical, particularly since 2015 with the escalation of conflict in Syria contributing to “the world’s largest refugee crisis in decades” (UNHCR, 2021), but children’s literature does not always reflect reality so closely.

I have looked at how these books are authored, studied in the classroom, mediated by teachers, and read by refugee and non-refugee children alike, and over the years, I have come to recognise that, although not a homogeneous category, much middle grade/ young adult literature of this kind (targeted at 8 – 18 year olds) could well be described as “docu-novels … whose priority is to narrate a social circumstance, or which have a message to tell” (Wilkie- Stibbs, 2008, Pg.12) following an almost formulaic representation of the refugee experience.  More recently, I have begun to notice a trend towards increasingly grim and explicit depictions of the suffering of refugee children, especially when trapped in refugee or detainment camps.

This chapter, therefore, questions the motivations of authors, the messages of such stories, and the images of refugees proffered by the books.  I will be examining in depth three middle grade (8-12)/ young adult (12-18) texts all of which are set mainly or partly in refugee and detainment camps, and been published since 2016, receiving public acclaim – Zana Fraillon’s “The Bone Sparrow” (2016), Elizabeth Laird’s “Welcome to Nowhere” (2017) and Ele Fontain’s “Boy ‘87” (2018).  Drawing on close textual analysis I will ask, controversially, how far should we go in exposing the horrors that children may be experiencing in the current global setting?  Does this foster empathy and a humane response, or do some of these narratives depict refugee children as victims of politically sanitised global disasters, without background explanation of the causes (Vassiloudi, 2019) and in need of “white saviours” to bring them to safety.  I will argue instead that we need a new framework of RefugeeCrit (Strekalova-Hughes, 2019) that promotes criticism and discussion, avoids pity and “othering”, and does not take war, violence and persecution for granted, but examines more closely the complex contexts about conflict leading to flight.

Dr Julia Hope is Head of the MA Children’s Literature programme. You can find information about the MA Children’s Literature programme at Goldsmiths which has 3 pathways:

MA Children’s Literature: Issues and Debates

MA Children’s Literature: Creative Writing Pathway

MA Children’s Literature: Children’s Book Illustration.

Blog by Julia Hope

We are a group of researchers based at the Centre for Language, Culture and Learning, at Goldsmiths and UCL BiLingo. We are passionate about multilingualism and language education and want to share our passion with language educators from formal and non-formal educational settings, parents, researchers, policy makers and other interested parties.

The pandemic has brought about unprecedented change and we wish to collectively reflect on how it has affected language education in the UK and beyond. With this objective in mind, we launched a new virtual events series called ‘Re-imagining language education during and after Covid-19: opportunities, challenges and possible futures’.

For our inaugural event, we explored the impact of the pandemic on community/heritage language learning. Community/heritage language learning is at the heart of sustaining the languages, cultures and histories of inheritance of minority ethnic communities for the next generation. It plays a central role in cultivating children’s multilingual capabilities and strengthening their linguistic and cultural identities. Community/heritage schools are thus, important sites for language and culture learning and socialisation.

They are also hubs for communication and social interaction between different generations. These schools are frequently grass-roots initiatives organised and led by ethnolinguistic communities themselves. Because they are a community-based organisation, they may struggle with funding and material resources, but at the same time they are more resourceful, flexible and creative. Social distancing restrictions and school closures has meant that many schools have been forced to suspend their operation or adapt overnight and with little preparation to different forms of online instruction:

• How have schools responded to the shift to online teaching and learning?
• What forms of online provision have they developed?
• In what ways has the digital mediation of teaching and learning transformed pedagogic practices?
• What new roles, relationships and networks has it fostered?
• How has it sustained a sense of community, belonging and wellbeing despite not being able to meet in person?
• What are the gains and what are the losses of online teaching and learning and for whom?
• What issues of inclusivity and social justice do these issues raise?
• What new visions of community languages education are emerging during and after the pandemic?

To address these questions, we invited Ms Cátia Ribeiro Verguete (Deputy Director at Instituto Camões UK for the promotion of Portuguese worldwide and PhD candidate in Education at Goldsmiths, University of London), Ms Marianne Siegfried-Brookes (Deputy Chair at VDSS, the Association of German Saturday Schools UK, Director at the German Academy UK, and German language educator) and Ms Pascale Vassie, OBE (Executive Director at the National Resource Centre for Supplementary Education) to share their personal and professional experiences.

To set the context of the panel discussion, Dr Vally Lytra (Goldsmiths) shared findings from her ongoing research project ‘Making sense of teachers and parents’ experiences with online teaching and learning in the Covid-19 pandemic’ which investigates to what extent and in what ways the pandemic has transformed Greek community language education in Switzerland. The webinar was moderated by Dr Froso Argyri (UCL BiLingo).

Watch the webinar and join the conversation:

Community Heritage Language Learning from Critical Connections on Vimeo.

Group members: Dr Froso Argyri (UCL BiLingo), Dr Jim Andrerson (Centre for Language, Culture and Learning, Goldsmiths), Dr Vally Lytra (Centre for Language, Culture and Learning, Goldsmiths), Dr Merle Mahon (UCL BiLingo), Dr Vicky Macleroy (Centre for Language, Culture and Learning, Goldsmiths), Dr Dina Mehmedbegovic-Smith (UCL BiLingo and hld) and Dr Cristina Ros i Sole (Centre for Language, Culture and Learning, Goldsmiths).

Blog by Vally Lytra

The best Universities are looking for the most academically able students; our school community is full of exceptionally bright students, and our job is to empower them to achieve their potential, knowing that if they do this, nothing will stop them from reaching the highest of heights.

Sam Dobin, 2021

The aim of this study is to uncover the stories of three generations of four White British families who have lived for most of the twentieth century in the same streets in the East London Borough of Newham; to learn about life and how it has changed across the generations, how people have forged their own destiny within challenging circumstances and how they view their future in the area. The study is showcased through an interactive website which highlights the changing nature of work, skills, knowledge, traditions and ways of speaking. The website is designed and illustrated by the artist Zahir Rafiq and photographs are by Chris Kelly. It has been funded by a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship (2017-20).

Like most Londoners, I have been inspired to learn about the extraordinary success of students attending school in one of the poorest and most diverse Boroughs in the capital. In 2021, fifty-five students at Brampton Manor Academy in Newham, East London, have been offered provisional places at Oxford and Cambridge – more than from Eton, Britain’s most famous fee-paying school. I join the Director of their Sixth Form, Sam Dobin, in applauding his students when he says:

This achievement is even more impressive when we learn that only two per cent of the school’s students are of monolingual White British origin. The students are from many countries of the world and for most, English is not their first language.

But what of those not lucky enough to get a place in this school?  Sitting in one of the small terraced houses in the middle of the school’s catchment area is sixteen-year-old Emma. Her mum is looking for a good sixth form College for her daughter, since her secondary school, near Tilbury, doesn’t have one. In fact, the school doesn’t even have a steady supply of excellent teachers or indeed teachers at all; nor reliable heating or other essential equipment like books and computers. When I ask her mum why she doesn’t try to get her daughter a place at the highly successful school around the corner, her reply is telling:

Oh, that school isn’t for the white children around here. It’s only for the black children. The Head doesn’t want our children. It’s not for the likes of us.

What is going on?  Paradoxically, White British families such as Emma’s have been variously accused of being racist or displaying ‘white privilege’ by some academics and politicians. Yet for this small community of White British families remaining in East London, nothing could be further from the truth. Squeezed between suggestions of racism and privilege and accusations of lethargy and violence, the families in the website reveal a tenacity to keep high standards of behaviour as well as mental and technical skills in spite of the current tide being strongly against them.

Blog by Eve Gregory

What is touch? How is touch linked to our sense of identity? How can we use film(making) to explore these ideas?

Film(making) opens up personal, sensuous and collaborative space(s) and horizon(s) for a playful encounter with being of and in this world. That is, a safe space to engage with that which excites us, makes us happy but also with that which scares us, unsettles us, upsets us and helps us explore our multiplicitous selves.

In German we call the act of watching television “fernsehen”. “Fern” means “far” and “sehen”, “to see”. Inspired by film phenomenological, feminist theories and critical pedagogy, I am passionate about the way in which an engagement with film allows us to see further than our own eyes, towards that which we can learn about if we are open to the possibilities, to listen attentively and not be afraid to ask questions. But it also lets us to look inwards, towards ourselves, to explore our own assumptions, misconceptions, prejudices, feelings and thoughts, including those that we might not be able to put into words (yet).

Minto Felix writes about how “to decolonise the curriculum, we have to decolonise ourselves” (2019: n.a.). In the past years, film(making) has become a focal point for me in my work as languages teacher, lecturer in initial teacher education, researcher and filmmaker. My audio-visual filmmaking practice A caressing dialogical encounter (2019) led me on my own personal quest to critically engage with these ideas.

Earlier in 2021, together with some former Goldsmiths PGCE Secondary Languages students, now NQTs, and partnership schools, we published an article in the Association for Language Learning (ALL) Languages Today Magazine (Issue 37) entitled Seven Starting Points to Decolonise the Curriculum, featuring amongst other resources, films to inspire and engage young people. Last year we had made stop-motion films together. Students on this year’s programme learned about the use of film in the languages classroom in a webinar with the educational charity Into Film.

It is our joint responsibility as educators to continuously reflect upon the questions: Who is represented? Who is speaking? Who is silenced? Which stories are explored or silenced? (Kramsch, 2011)? It is also, I feel on us to think about how we can educate our students who perceive today’s world as one in which the digital and the material are deeply interwoven (Pink, Ardèvol and Lanzini, 2016), to responsibly use digital tools and to use them to make our world more inclusive, more just, more equitable, more peaceful. Film(making) helps me critically engage with these ideas. In my work here at Goldsmiths but also as ALL Deputy Honorary Membership Officer, I see it as my responsibility to support languages teachers and students in whichever educational setting they work and learn to engage with these questions and issues. We must tackle the challenges we face collaboratively, together, as a community.

Blog by Dr Judith Rifeser (PGCE, FHEA)

If you have not done so, I highly recommend you read Inspire: Exciting Ways of Teaching Creative Writing published by the Centre for Language, Culture and Learning in November 2020. You can download your free copy here or buy the paperback on Amazon. The anthology was followed by a conference, Inspire (15-16 April 2021) in which some of contributors presented their work. In the anthology, you will find a series of essays, creative responses and meditations on the teaching of creative writing – and much else besides. The aim was to inspire the reader to write imaginatively, and to learn more about creative writing and how to teach it. The editors of this anthology (myself, Emma Brankin and Carinya Sharples) are practising creative writers and teachers of this familiar but possibly contentious subject. Creative writing is seen as a controversial subject for lots of different reasons: in academia because it’s viewed as lacking rigour, in schools because it might facilitate unsavoury views and images, in society as a whole because it’s perceived as a ‘soft’ subject. Watch this hilarious SNL sketch on YouTube which pokes fun at attitudes towards it:

Proud Parents

But people’s attitudes towards it need to change. This is, in part, what we aimed to do by publishing the anthology. The contributors to the anthology have a great deal of ‘real world’ experience of trying to impart our enthusiasm for reading and writing poetry, fiction, drama and creative non-fiction in diverse settings. We see this as an important social and pedagogical mission. We first discussed devising such an anthology in order to showcase some of the great work that the postgraduate students on the MA in Creative Writing and Education at Goldsmiths have done as part of this programme during the 2019-2020 sessions. Some of their work is in the anthology. What follows are the highlights of their work; an invitation, if you like, to read more!

Lexi Allen offers a concise, original piece based on more detailed research here. She writes of overcoming many barriers – both physical and psychological – to leave excerpts of her creative writing in a number of public settings – trains, libraries, bars and some virtual spaces too. Her work is inspirational because it illustrates how a writer can find a public voice and new resources of confidence in very surprising ways and places. Matilda Rostant shares her important findings for her research, focusing on the sometimes secret writing of fantasy fiction. She shows how there is an unjustified snobbery about genre fiction in many educational settings, and uses ‘autoethnography’ – a research-informed version of autobiography – to unearth some important findings about the connections with genre fiction and one’s own life.

Tanya Royer demonstrates how creative writers can research their unconscious using a series of mindful strategies such as meditation and free writing. Her findings are startling and moving, and reveal how creative writers can guide themselves to pen original pieces and find out about their own unconscious desires if they follow a strict research methodology. In his piece, James Ward admits to being intimidated by what he perceived to be his lack of subject knowledge in the field of creative writing. And so, setting out in a similar way to Tanya, he devised a regime of writing and reading exercises, which built up his confidence and unlocked his creativity. Anyone who has similar issues should read his article. Both James and Tanya (and many other writers here) show the power of what Peter Elbow, the acknowledged champion of this often-criticised way of writing, calls ‘free writing’. Elbow wrote in the 1980s (the edition I quote from is a later edition):

The most effective way I know to improve your writing is to do freewriting exercises regularly. At least three times a week. They are sometimes called ‘automatic writing’, ‘babbling’, or ‘jabbering’ exercises. The idea is to write for 10 minutes (later on, perhaps fifteen-twenty). Don’t stop for anything. Go quickly without rushing.

Never stop to look back, to cross something out, to wonder how to spell something, to wonder what word or thought to use, or to think about what you’re doing. If you can’t think of a word or a spelling, just a squiggle or else write ‘I can’t think of it’. Just put something down. The easiest thing to do is put down whatever is in your mind.

(Elbow, 1998: 3)

Free writing plays an important role as a pedagogical strategy in a number of pieces, but most particularly in James and Tanya’s.

Moving into the modern age, Emma Brankin explores how social media can be used to nurture students’ creative writing. The article is bursting with fascinating and very workable ideas, including the brilliant idea of the ‘auto-complete’ poem, which is a sort of modern day update of Elbow’s free writing concept. Teacher and writer Sara Carroll shows how teenage girls could be guided to be more critical and feminist in their perspectives. She uses free writing as one of many strategies to encourage her female pupils to think about the ways in which girls are conditioned in oppressive ways by a patriarchal society. Juwairiah Mussa shows how free writing and poetry can be used as a form of healing during extremely stressful times. Her pieces about living through lockdown are not only powerful examples of creative writing in themselves but also great models to share with creative writing students. Her reflections on the process of writing the pieces are pedagogical in that they guide the reader into thinking about the ways in which free writing can be healing and also help develop a greater awareness of the social, psychological and economic factors that shape who we are.

Carinya Sharples shares with Juwairiah a similar quest to find new ways of expression in her search to find a ‘third space’ where mixed-race writers can feel free to express themselves and explore their identities. Using various strategies such as ‘heritage objects’ ‘rivers of reading’ and the devising of mixed-race characters – all explained in her article – she reveals how creative writing can liberate and enlighten, and also challenge and disturb. Jake Smith draws upon a rich tradition of experimental writing in order to devise a series of learning activities and lessons that create astounding and thought-provoking writing. He uses experimental reading material as prompts to generate creative writing and offers his own free writing as a possible model to inspire his students.

So to sum up about the pieces by postgraduates on our MA, we could say that there are some common threads: there is a zest to experiment and to use both well-worn and unusual literary forms, from genre fiction to the most esoteric devices; there’s a deep commitment to giving both research and learning activities a serious theoretical underpinning; and, above all, there’s a profound commitment to nurturing playfulness around creative writing.

Blog by Dr Francis Gilbert