Through The Eyes Of Children

Theatre Porto

For Refugee Week 2026, I worked with Theatre Porto and primary schools across Ellesmere Port to create Through the Eyes of Children, an exhibition exploring migration, belonging, welcome and community.

Working as a curator and collaborative artist, I developed the creative framework for the project, coordinated work across the participating schools and supported teachers to develop their own ideas with their classes. Each school approached the subject differently, so an important part of my role was helping teachers turn their ideas into achievable artworks, while finding ways to bring everything together as a coherent exhibition.

As part of the project, I wrote There Was a Child, a short story informed by research into refugee experiences. In workshops, I used the story to ask children what they would offer the child and their family. Their responses became words, drawings, colours, shapes and symbols, which I brought together into twelve large flags for All of Us, Waving. The finished flags now fly in Whitby Park.

I designed and installed the final exhibition at Theatre Porto, transforming the space with cardboard, boxes, rope and a temporary shelter, and bringing the different schools’ work together into one large installation.

The exhibition was warmly received by schools, families and visitors, with particularly positive responses to the scale of the installation and the way the children’s work transformed the theatre.