Four children bound for Fairbridge Farm School, Molong, Australia in 1938. Reproduced courtesy of the Molong Historical Society.
Conference on Britain’s Child Migrants
(V&A Museum of Childhood)
Britain’s Child Migrants: interpreting the past and remembering today.
Saturday 11 June 2016
10.00 – 16.00
In 2010, the Australian National Maritime Museum opened its exhibition, On Their Own: Britain’s Child Migrants, which has since toured extensively in Australia and Britain, and reached several hundreds of thousands of visitors. The culmination of its tour at the V&A Museum of Childhood provides an important opportunity to reflect on the processes of remembering Britain’s child migrants both through recent museum exhibitions and academic research. As the legacy of the child migration schemes continues to be examined through public inquiries in Britain and Australia, it is clear that this remains an unresolved history with effects still being lived out in the lives of the children and families who experienced these schemes.
Confirmed speakers:
- Chair: Esther Lutman, Curator V&A Museum of Childhood
- Key note: Kim Tao, Curator Post Federation Migration Australian National Maritime Museum
- Co-curator of the exhibition Gordon Lynch, Michael Ramsey Professor of Modern Theology, University of Kent
- Stephen Constantine, Emeritus Professor of Modern British History at Lancaster University
- Eithne Nightingale, writer and photographer, researching children, migration and diasporas
- Artist, Jini Rawlings
See also: Giulia Rhodes, Britain’s child migrants: ‘I was told I was going on a picnic’, The Guardian, 24 October 2015
