This drawing is by Samuel.
Before we began the students’ ABC session – the first at their school – I was told that it would be Samuel’s last day. He had arrived in the UK a few months prior – a ‘recently-arrived’ student – but was being moved on to a new home and a new school. As was the case with other students after that day, it was unclear to me whether the move was instigated by the Home Office or the family or both, and I never knew why Samuel’s family had sought refuge in the UK. Samuel had, I was told, made good progress during his time at the school and was well liked. When I met him, he seemed to me much younger than his age, with a gentle face and shy smile as he entered the room. I had been told that the ESOL classroom and his ESOL teacher were his favourite place and his person. He arrived that day with presents for the teacher. They were very busy and though they smiled and said hello, they didn’t quite notice his gift.
Samuel was visibly surprised to find that we were doing a workshop that day. He had forgotten that was happening and did not quite manage to hide his disappointment.
Despite this, Samuel worked diligently on the exercises that morning. The children watched a 4minute point-of-view film, in which the viewer follows a person as they arrive in a building. The children used their detective skills to find the clues about who the person might be – where they live, how their surroundings are setup, their beliefs, their passions, their personal rules as we understand them from what we see in the film. We worked together to compare what the children had noticed and to formulate questions about the gaps in our understanding of the person in the film.
The other children struggled a bit with the idea that they could document what they saw using words if they wanted but could also use images or diagrams or whatever helped them to remember the details of the person they were trying to understand. The one exception was Samuel, who drew the clues from the film as a coherent picture, with the person and their door at the centre and objects from throughout the film integrated to portray a cohesive life. I thought it was beautiful and took a picture of his unique fieldnotes. But as we carried on with the workshop, Samuel carried on with his picture using a bright red marker rather than the light blue from before. I asked if I could snap another photo with this new, striking colour. He allowed this but said he wasn’t finished and continued to work.
During the remainder of the session, he tried a few times to get his favourite teacher’s attention, but the teacher was busy with their work as I led the class. Samuel focused and worked on his picture. When the class left the room, Samuel’s picture was left on the desk, overturned. He had placed large marks, expletives, and images of guns on top of the blue drawing, all in red marker. Concerned, I passed the image to the deputy head teacher. They suggested he must be upset about moving. I met with that group of children for several months, but never saw Samuel again. And no one on the teaching staff knew what happened to him after his last day at the school.
Though he had not spoken up during the workshop, Samuel spoke with his image.
The pieces in this exhibition have been created by young people and adults who tell their stories in small and big ways using multimodal (meaning ‘mixed modes’) ethnographic (literally meaning ‘life-mapping’) practices. The QR Codes will provide access to some of their actual voices. The images and voices together support a different way to listen to their stories and ideas about what matters and what might be changed for the better.