Island to Island

A view of the Anglican Church in Black River, St Elizabeth, Jamaica © Tim Smith

This is a guest blog by photographer Tim Smith, a long-standing friend of the Migration Museum Project and contributor to our 100 Images of Migration exhibition. He describes the background to Island to Island – Journeys Through the Caribbean, a new exhibition at Leeds Central Library which runs from 27 June until 27 July 2018. 

A new exhibition, Island to Island – Journeys Through the Caribbean, runs at the Central Library in Leeds throughout July 2018, but visitors will find it hard to spot many photos of turquoise seas and white sandy beaches lined with palm trees. For that just sit tight, Google “Caribbean Images” and view thousands of photos designed to encourage tourists to visit what is undoubtedly a beautiful part of the world, but which totally ignore the lives of people who live and work there.

First page of search result for Caribbean images © Google

Cutting sugar cane on the Blairmont Estate in the Berbice area of Guyana © Tim Smith

I live in Bradford, work as a professional photographer and have contributed my photographs to several different Migration Museum projects, including their first exhibition 100 Images of Migration. Having grown up in different parts of the world, including the Caribbean, I suspect a nomadic upbringing is one reason why I’m so interested in using photography, film and audio to explore the lives of Britain’s cosmopolitan communities and their links with people and places overseas.

This particular project began in 2010 when I travelled back, for the first time in 40 years, to my childhood home of Barbados. I also visited Dominica, the island from which many of my neighbours in Bradford originate. Returning made me realise that although I can never claim the Caribbean as home, while I was there I did feel at home. This made me determined to investigate other people’s ideas of ‘home’ by visiting other places in the region closely linked to communities in Britain, with the long-term ambition of producing an exhibition that moved beyond the popular stereotypes of ‘The Paradise Islands’.

Since 2010 I’ve been back to Barbados and Dominica, and also visited Antigua, Carriacou, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St Kitts & Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent, and Trinidad & Tobago. Photos of all feature in Island to Island, together with a fascinating series of pictures taken by my father Derek during the 1950s and ‘60s. Shot on slide film they show everyday life in Barbados and other islands that my father visited whilst working for the British Government’s Overseas Development Administration.

A view of Bathsheba, a village on the Atlantic coast of Barbados, during the 1960s © Tim Smith

These slides lay unseen in a wardrobe for decades, but I dug them out and recently scanned a selection for display. Alongside my pictures they show how life has changed over the past sixty years. I’ve been sharing both sets of images with groups of people across Leeds, using them as a spark for exploring their experiences of life both ‘over here’ and ‘over there’. Recording their memories and reflections often brings new life and meanings to the pictures. Some of their words will be used as part of the exhibition along with other people’s stories gathered by Leeds writer Khadijah Ibrahiim, whose poetry also features in the show.

A mural outside Charlestown, the capital of Nevis. The twin island nation of St Kitts & Nevis is the original home of most of the people who migrated from the Caribbean to Leeds during the 1950s and ’60s © Tim Smith

As well as celebrating the light, life and landscapes of the Caribbean, the exhibition is also inspired by a quote from the Jamaican author, Rex Nettleford, who wrote: ‘The apt description of the typical Caribbean person is that he/she is part-African, part-European, part-Asian, part-Native American but totally Caribbean. To perceive this is to understand the creative diversity which is at once cause and occasion, result and defining point of Caribbean cultural life.’ I set out to create photographs which explore the region’s past and present, a story that embraces a fusion of cultures and has shaped a set of regional identities which vary from island to island, giving each nation its own distinctive character.

The War Memorial in Basseterre remembering those men of St Kitts & Nevis who lost their lives in the First World War, 1914-1918 © Tim Smith

I’ve also asked people in Leeds how this multicultural heritage – African, European, Asian and Amerindian – is reflected by Caribbean festivals, music and masquerade, and how Caribbean carnival has become an important part of the cultural calendar across Britain. These interviews are featured in a film illustrated with my father’s photos of the Trinidad Carnival in 1967 (the same year that Leeds West Indian Carnival began) and my own pictures of carnivals across the Caribbean and Yorkshire.

The Renegades Steel Orchestra, a steel pan band, on the road in Port of Spain at the 1967 Trinidad Carnival © Tim Smith

It should also be remembered that the presence of black people in Britain stretches back many centuries. This history, and Leeds’ historical connections with the Caribbean, will be explored using material drawn from the collections of Leeds Central Library, curated by the Chapeltown-based arts project Heritage Corner.

A group of girls eating candyfloss making their way to the Junior Calypso Competition in Newtown, Dominica © Tim Smith

In many ways it’s a nonsense to attempt to cover such a large and varied area in a single exhibition, but whilst providing glimpses of different stories it also aims to be the catalyst for much more. Producing it has brought back many memories for me. I hope it does the same for others who once lived in the Caribbean, and inspires people to further explore the region’s history and its links with Britain, perhaps by investigating their own family stories. I also hope that many visitors to Island to Island will discover something new about the Caribbean, and some may be tempted to (re)visit an endlessly fascinating and diverse part of the world which offers so much more than the images and ideas offered up by the tourist industry.

A make-up workshop in the Hope Botanic Gardens, Kingston, Jamaica © Tim Smith 

Island to Island
27 June 2018–27 July 2018
Room 700
Leeds Central Library
Municipal Buildings, Calverly St
Leeds, West Yorkshire LS1 3AB

Click here for more information 

The exhibition is available for tour to other venues. Please contact: timsmithphotos@btinternet.com 

Text and images © Tim Smith

Migration Museum Book Club

The Migration Museum Book Club aims to bring together those who have stories to tell and those who have read good stories.

Devised and run by our volunteers and based around a monthly theme, attendees are invited to bring a book, poem, article or a piece of their own writing to share and discuss with the group. Themes will be announced in advance of each meeting and will revolve around the subjects explored by the museum and its exhibitions, primarily focusing on migration, identity, and travel.

As the group develops, we hope to explore past, present, and future ideas through the lens of migration and grow the book club into a regular community, where people can share or just listen.

Our book club is open to all and there’s no need to register in advance – just turn up on the day.

Migration Museum Book Club dates:

Sunday 8 April 2018, 2.30pm
Sunday 20 May 2018, 2.30pm
Sunday 17 June 2018, 2.30pm
Sunday 15 July 2018, 2.30pm

Image © Tabitha Deadman

A Polaroid for a Refugee

Fahima and family in Austria, part of Giovanna Del Sarto’s A Polaroid for a Refugee project © Giovanna Del Sarto

A guest blog by Giovanna Del Sarto, creator of A Polaroid for a Refugee, a photographic project depicting points of transition in the lives of individual refugees. As part of our activities for Refugee Week 2018, we are displaying a selection of images from A Polaroid for a Refugee at the Migration Museum at The Workshop until Sunday 1 July 2018. Giovanna will be speaking at our Refugee Week Late Opening on Thursday 21 June.

In 2015, after months spent reading newspapers, watching television reports and listening to different opinions about the refugee crisis in Europe, I felt the urge to go and witness.

My aim was also to volunteer, to be able to understand and be close to the people involved. Since October 2015, I have visited various locations including Preševo, Belgrade, (Serbia); Lesvos Island, Athens, Idomeni, where the humanitarian need was most tangible; and Chios, an island located just a few kilometres from the Turkish coast (Greece).

On all of these occasions, I had my Polaroid Land Camera with me – and it was during my first trip that the A Polaroid for a Refugee project was born.

Chios Island, Greece, 2016, part of Giovanna Del Sarto’s A Polaroid for a Refugee project © Giovanna Del Sarto

It is a project based on the concept of giving – giving something back to the refugees, a moment of their life and journey captured forever. The Polaroids reflect the inner strength and dignity maintained by refugees during their long and harrowing journeys. For every Polaroid I take, I give one to the refugee as a reminder of the moment. On the back of the Polaroid is a simple statement: ‘Wherever your destination may be – tell me when you feel you have reached a safe place.’ This is a message of hope, which, sadly, for some may never be fulfilled.

Everyone I photographed has a Polaroid now. I love the idea that they will look at those pictures one day in the future. The portraits I took are very similar to family portraits, conveying a relaxed and carefree attitude that only scratches the surface of the refugees’ lives. Yet the value for the refugee is to have this moment of escape from the horrors of their daily lives and to carry a reminder of it with them on their onward journeys.

Everyone wanted their photograph taken, but for many different reasons. The young men loved to pose; the mothers wanted a picture to show their children when they’re older; and the kids just saw it as a bit of fun.

And for us who look at these images? We see a different side to the refugee crisis from the one we’re usually offered. We see these people just as people, not as victims or heroes, not as refugees to pity or as migrants to fear. They emerge as humans – resilient, thoughtful, joyful individuals.

Mahbub in Athens, Greece, 2016

Since August 2017, I have been visiting people who have kept in touch with me and are building new lives in Europe. Some, such as Fahima, still have the original Polaroid, enabling us to reunite the two Polaroids in the place that they have chosen to rebuild their lives. Others, such as Rohina, had their Polaroids confiscated along the way but kept hold of my contact details and kept in touch.

I find this second stage of my project both fascinating and challenging, encountering situations that I might not have had if I had only focused the project on the Balkan route or if I had focused only on European countries that are considered ‘the destination’.

Fahima in Austria, part of Giovanna Del Sarto’s A Polaroid for a Refugee project © Giovanna Del Sarto

There is sometimes a perception that, once people reach their ‘destination’, everything will be magically healed. I met people along the way who didn’t have any money, food or means to carry on their journeys, yet somehow they managed to ‘make it’. At what cost, though? Some of the people I have revisited are struggling to come to terms with the memories and legacy of their journeys, and their new lives and circumstances.

Witnessing both situations has led me to realise how far away I am from truly understanding the experiences that these people have gone through.

Mahbub, Switzerland, 2017, part of Giovanna Del Sarto’s A Polaroid for a Refugee project © Giovanna Del Sarto

A selection of images from A Polaroid for a Refugee will be displayed in the stairwell and entrance corridor to the Migration Museum at The Workshop from Thursday 7 June until Sunday 1 July. Opening hours and visitor information.

Giovanna will be speaking about her project as part of our Refugee Week late opening on Thursday 21 June.

For more information on A Polaroid for a Refugee, please visit apfar.org or the project’s Facebook page.

A new brochure and a cloud’s silver lining

We’re putting the finishing touches to our new brochure (our sixth, by my reckoning), which we hope to have ready in paper form and as a pdf on our website in the next few weeks. It’s always an interesting process: taking stock of how far we have travelled and how much we have done, re-examining some of the arguments we put forward in support of our cause previously, seeing how much our current aims coincide with those with which we started five years ago. It’s incredibly humbling, too, to see how much what we have achieved has depended on the partnerships and unsung contribution of volunteers, linked organisations, supporters both individual and corporate.

One of the largest chapters in the brochure sets out the case for a migration museum, building on the latest research and reflecting a changing climate in the country’s attitude to migration. Much of the evidence here surprises me every time we revisit it for a new edition of the brochure – the facts, for example, that the UK, statistically, is more cynical about the reasons immigrants come to our country (more than 40 per cent of those surveyed saying they do so to seek benefits) than all other European nations, or that there is a greater divide in our country than all others between those who are young and degree-educated and those who are older and not university-educated in terms of people’s opinion of the impact of immigration on the economy. And then there is the statistic that in some ways lies at the heart of what the Migration Museum Project has been about from the word go: the fact that more than three-quarters of the population see immigration a ‘problem’ nationally, but less than one third see it as a ‘problem’ in their local area.

One of the tables used in our forthcoming brochure; this shows the UK public to be more likely than that of any other country surveyed to think that immigrants come to this country to seek social benefits © Transatlantic Trends

This kind of mismatch is not unusual: the misrepresentation of the level of crime, for example, is often used as evidence that the fear of crime dramatically outstrips the reality. But it is nevertheless an interesting illustration of our ability to hold an intellectual or abstract opinion that is at variance with the day-to-day reality of our lives. Making exceptions for people we know and like seems to be part of the basic human condition:

‘I hate all Man City supporters.’

‘But Tim, your best friend, supports City.’

‘Yeah, but Tim’s different.’

or

‘All people from eastern Europe should go “home” now.’

‘What, including Pavel, our Julie’s boyfriend?’

‘Well no, obviously not Pavel. Of course, he can stay.’

It’s not quite the same, but there was an interesting illustration of this basic point – that people feel differently about ‘others’ once they are actually connected to them, through their stories, through meeting them, through living among them – in the BBC three-part programme that earlier this year ‘commemorated’ the 25th anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence. In the first episode of the rather optimistically titled Stephen: The Murder that Changed a Nation, there is a moment (around 48 minutes in) when Doreen and Neville Lawrence become aware of an article about them in the Daily Mail (Monday 10 May 1993), criticising them for associating themselves with a march that had ended in violence (the article’s sub-heading read ‘Activists turn brutal killing of a schoolboy into a political cause.’). The Lawrences and their advisers consider how they should respond, and somebody suggests a phone call to the paper. As they discuss options, Neville Lawrence mentions that he knows someone senior on the paper, having done some plastering work on his new home. This someone senior turns out to be the newspaper’s editor, Paul Dacre, whose telephone number Neville has.

He phones Dacre.

What followed is quite extraordinary. Dacre, who hadn’t realised that Stephen Lawrence was Neville’s son, apologises for the article, arranges a corrective interview that is published days later in his paper and then – four years later, in 1997 – is personally responsible for the Daily Mail’s historic and sensational front page article that names the ‘Murderers’ of Stephen Lawrence and challenges them to sue the paper if they think they have been falsely accused. It was an article that shocked people, both because it dared to say what no other paper to that point had, and because the Mail was the paper that many people would have considered the least likely to run such a story. In one broad stroke, it managed to subvert liberals’ opinions of the Daily Mail while possibly also confounding the expectations of its readers.

The famous front page of the Daily Mail on 14 February 1997, an exact print replica of Paul Dacre’s handwritten layout.

Of course, the story doesn’t have the resolution that we might all have hoped for. Only two of the ‘murderers’ have ever been convicted, and the chances of the others being brought to justice seem increasingly slim. More significantly, of course, there’s no getting over the fact of Stephen Lawrence’s murder. With damning poignancy, Doreen Lawrence talks in the BBC programme of the family’s decision to bury Stephen in Jamaica, ‘because England did not deserve him’. Despite the title of the BBC programme, has the nation in fact changed to the extent that she might have made a different decision now? Huge question marks remain, but it is nonetheless gently reassuring to think that a paper that is regularly pilloried for promoting what people see as a right-wing, xenophobic agenda in this instance so firmly aligned itself in opposition to an act of racist brutality, largely on the basis of the human contact between its editor and the victim’s father. Candidly, in the BBC’s programme, Dacre wondered whether he would have written the piece had he not known Neville Lawrence personally – and ended up deciding that he would not have.

‘Any fool can know,’ as Albert Einstein said. ‘The point is to understand.’