The Walk - a travelling festival of art and hope in support of refugees
Amal, the puppet, The Walk Festival,
https://www.walkwithamal.org/
Following a visit to The Jungle refugee camp in Calais, Alison Tobin made a personal connection with the charity Good Chance. She introduced members of EECERA Children from Refugee or Migrant Backgrounds Special Interest Group (SIG) to Good Chance’s latest creative work ‘The Walk’, an 8000km walk of welcome by little Amal, a 3.5 m puppet of a 9-year-old Syrian refugee girl.
The SIG was conceived in Thessaloniki at the EECERA 2019 conference with co-conveners Donna Gaywood and Jennifer Koutoulas. In 2021 a subcommittee was formed by interested members: Donna Gaywood, Jennifer Koutoulas, Josephine Gabi, Angelika Popyk and Alison Tobin who work in partnership with the charity Good Chance. They have provided support through consultation in relation to refugee and host children. They have created age-appropriate resources and raise awareness of the event and what it stands for.
Amal’s journey started in Turkey, at the Syrian border, and culminates at the Manchester International Festival, offering “a cultural odyssey transcending many borders, politics and languages to tell a story of shared humanity”. It is a walk of welcome, “a travelling festival of art and hope in support of refugees”. The EECERA SIG subgroup became friends of the Walk and were able to provide early years expertise to support the Good Chance team.
Good Chance had created an educational pack for primary and secondary school pupils to be used alongside Amal’s journey.
“As early educators and early years researchers we wanted to create a similar education pack for children from 0-7 to be evaluated in practice, which we have done, and have thus developed “Amal’s corridor of friends” research project.
The aim is to investigate the different experiences of The Walk in England, using Amal’s journey as a vehicle, particularly in terms of the welcome Amal receives from host country children and their educators.
We are also working with early education colleagues in Turkey, Greece, England and Australia to assess and evaluate the Early Years resource pack in terms of the children’s responses, with a view to developing a future pack which will be disseminated worldwide to support host country children to welcome refugees.”
Donna Gaywood and Alison Tobin are both BCU & CREC PhD Candidates supervised by CREC Directors, Prof. Chris Pascal and Prof. Tony Bertram. They are also members of the CREC Learning Circle.
Donna’s research looked at the post migration lived experiences of refugee children in ECEC settings in England. As a result, Donna has developed a pedagogy of welcome, which aims to support host children to be able to welcome others who are different from them and empower practitioners to create dynamic spaces of welcome.
Alison’s research focus explores how a pedagogy of play can support the transitions of migrant children, to help syncretise the cultures of both migrant and non-migrant children within early years settings in England, to create mutual understanding and positive relationships, from the perspectives of children, parents and practitioners.
Jennifer Koutoulas B.Ed., M.Ed. is an experienced early years and early childhood teacher, educational leader, project lead, mentor, and co researcher. She is a director on the board of Early Years Intercultural Association EYIA™, a registered charity in Australia. The charity works in partnership with stakeholders to support wellbeing of young children from refugee or migrant backgrounds with their families, and foster community integration.
Josephine Gabi is a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research interests are on children’s (refugee, migrant and host) development of a sense of belonging and identity in the Early Years Foundation Stage and the restorative potential of hospitable and de/colonial pedagogy as a critical orientation towards destabilising conventional ways of knowing, being and doing that subjugates, silences and delegitimises the knowledges, histories and experiences of subordinated groups.
Anzhela Popyk is a doctoral student at University SWPS, Poland. Her research focuses on migrant children's transnational transitions from one cultural, societal and educational context to another; children’s sense of belonging and identity formation. Anzhela develops the participatory child-centered approach in research with migrant and refugee children while underlining children’s rights and research ethics methodology.
The Walk UK events started on 19th October in Folkestone. Amal will visit London and Coventry before concluding her journey in Manchester on 3rd November.