Project Background
Transparency: Living without borders
Photography by unaccompanied refugee youth
London, United Kingdom, 2002 - 2003
Partner: Trinity Community Centre
Funded by: The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund
Child refugees arrive on Britain's soil every day of the week without a parent or guardian. They arrive, adrift from their own culture, language and all support structures, stripped of any certainty for their future, on the run from extreme trauma and in search of sanctuary. Some have made the long journey to the UK overland surviving on their wits while others are brought over by smugglers paid for by their families and are simply dumped once they reach the UK. All too often they are met by blanket public hostility, stigma, and discrimination. The intense psychological scars these young people have accumulated both in their home countries and in leaving their families behind are merely compounded by the isolation they face on their arrival in the UK.
6,000 young people are believed to have fled their native countries and travelled alone to the UK to seek asylum. In 2000, 2,735 unaccompanied refugee children applied for asylum there, but still relatively little is known about their individual experiences.
The Transparency project offers a window on the experiences of a group of young refugees since their arrival in London's East End from countries including Afghanistan, Angola, Iraq, Nigeria, Romania, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka. Through photography, the 13 students expressed their desire for people to look beyond their refugee status and to see them as they see themselves: as teenagers, far from home, in a difficult present, determined to succeed in spite of their past.
The project grew to be an important support network for the young participants as well as providing them with a creative outlet through which they could combat the dehumanising portrayal of refugees presented in the British media. An individual from the group has gone on to study photography full-time and has secured commission by the BBC. Another member of the group became a finalist in a national self-portraiture competition, featured on Channel 4 and exhibited in London's National Portrait Gallery. In June 2003, the Transparency project won the Arts, Culture and Heritage category of the Charity Awards 2003.