Refugees Arrivals – Newcastle University

This research animation, titled “Refugee arrivals”, was commissioned by Professor Peter Hopkins at Newcastle University and funded by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) as part of the international research project “The everyday experiences of young refugees and asylum seekers in public space”. It draws on the project’s findings to explore the challenges and opportunities that refugees and asylum seekers face as they navigate arrival in the UK.

For those seeking asylum, stepping foot on new soil is the first of many forms of arrival they will negotiate. They also arrive into new political and bureaucratic systems, new medical, educational and social systems, and new spheres for expression of the self. Arrivals like these can be slow and complex. What does it mean, and what toll does it take, when arrival is a process that is ongoing?

The stories in the animation were fictionalised from the research and voiced by actors, a deliberate choice that let us stay true to the realities the participants described while protecting their identities. As an empathic piece of research dissemination, the animation combines hand-drawn animation with 2D motion graphics and professional sound design. Turning rigorous social science into something a general audience can feel as well as understand is the heart of my animation work with academics and researchers.

The work formed part of HERA’s public dissemination strategy for the project, sitting alongside peer-reviewed journal articles, exhibitions and staged performances, and the wider research went on to inform the academic book Refugee Youth: Migration, Justice and Urban Space. The project ran transnationally across Newcastle, Leipzig, Brussels and Amsterdam, led at Newcastle by Professor Peter Hopkins with Dr Robin Finlay (now at Durham University) and Dr Matthew Benwell, all of Newcastle’s School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at the time.

If you’re a researcher or organisation working on migration, asylum, social justice or any complex topic, and you’d like to turn your research into animation, I’d love to hear from you. Get in touch.