TY - JOUR

T1 - Migration Stories North West and Global Education

T2 - Perspectives From a Community Heritage Project

AU - Lloyd Williams, Alison

AU - Peniston-Bird, Corinna

AU - Wynne, Karen

PY - 2024/4/9

Y1 - 2024/4/9

N2 - Drawing on the methodology and preliminary observations of a Heritage Lottery-funded project, we evidence how community heritage can promote global learning. Migration Stories North West is led by an interdisciplinary team of global education practitioners, artists and academic historians, and shaped by the interests and contributions of the adult and youth participants who have sought out stories of over a hundred individuals who have moved in or out of North West England from ancient to contemporary times. These stories, documented on an interactive online map, give migration a human face and a local connection. They capture the multiple drivers that influence relocation, reflect the contributions individuals made to their host societies, both mundane and exceptional, and reveal the impact of legislation in shaping migration patterns and migrants’ lives. Researching the stories led participants from the local to the global, and from the past to the present to the future, fostering a sense of solidarity that stretches not only across space and place but across time. In this way, it helps to address Andreotti’s call to challenge ‘(delusions of) separation’ (2011). Participants have uncovered for themselves narratives that challenge anti-migration rhetoric such as the long-standing hybridity of their localities. The temporal span has also encouraged both reflective distance and contemporary comparison (Santisteban, Pagès and Bravo, 2018). Presenting the stories on the interactive map enables viewers to explore the data following their own interests, but they cannot help but encounter a sum greater than its parts. Our methodology fosters ‘perspective consciousness’ (Baker and Shulsky, 2020), cross-cultural awareness, and appreciation of individual choice and agency and is readily replicable. These qualities illustrate the alignment between heritage work and the values of global education, inviting new ways of conceptualising migration - of self and other in the world - with hope, inspiration and learning (Bourn, 2021).

AB - Drawing on the methodology and preliminary observations of a Heritage Lottery-funded project, we evidence how community heritage can promote global learning. Migration Stories North West is led by an interdisciplinary team of global education practitioners, artists and academic historians, and shaped by the interests and contributions of the adult and youth participants who have sought out stories of over a hundred individuals who have moved in or out of North West England from ancient to contemporary times. These stories, documented on an interactive online map, give migration a human face and a local connection. They capture the multiple drivers that influence relocation, reflect the contributions individuals made to their host societies, both mundane and exceptional, and reveal the impact of legislation in shaping migration patterns and migrants’ lives. Researching the stories led participants from the local to the global, and from the past to the present to the future, fostering a sense of solidarity that stretches not only across space and place but across time. In this way, it helps to address Andreotti’s call to challenge ‘(delusions of) separation’ (2011). Participants have uncovered for themselves narratives that challenge anti-migration rhetoric such as the long-standing hybridity of their localities. The temporal span has also encouraged both reflective distance and contemporary comparison (Santisteban, Pagès and Bravo, 2018). Presenting the stories on the interactive map enables viewers to explore the data following their own interests, but they cannot help but encounter a sum greater than its parts. Our methodology fosters ‘perspective consciousness’ (Baker and Shulsky, 2020), cross-cultural awareness, and appreciation of individual choice and agency and is readily replicable. These qualities illustrate the alignment between heritage work and the values of global education, inviting new ways of conceptualising migration - of self and other in the world - with hope, inspiration and learning (Bourn, 2021).

KW - Migration History

KW - Global Education

KW - North West England

KW - Interdisciplinary

KW - Andreotti

M3 - Journal article

VL - 38

SP - 69

EP - 85

JO - Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review

JF - Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review

SN - 1748-135X

ER -