Migration Sounds Pop-Up Exhibition
Visit this pop-up exhibition on the Balcony to hear Migration Sounds, the first ever global collection of the sounds of human migration, recorded across 51 countries in a year-long collaboration between Cities and Memory and the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford.
This unique project, which aims to reframe the conversation around migration, features 120 sounds and stories of migration across 51 countries from Argentina to Australia, featuring personal stories from diaspora communities all over the world, as well as migration camps and dramatic sea rescues.
The project is packed with remarkable sound recordings and, crucially, each recording is accompanied by the story behind the sound and what it means to the person who recorded it. The collection includes:
- Dramatic sounds of the rescue of migrants in the Mediterranean
- Traditional ways of life, including nomadic Kazakh herdsmen in China, Bedouin tribes in Egypt or Inuit dog sleds in Greenland
- Migration-related protests against police brutality in France, against anti-migration laws in Germany and the USA
- The sounds of diaspora communities, including the Filipino community in Dubai, the Chinese community in New York and Sikh, Polish, Jamaican and Bangladeshi communities in London
- The production of razor wire to create fortifications for Hungary's border fences
- The aftermath of riots in a migration centre in Greece
- The sounds of people crossing borders and making the journeys of migration, both forced and unforced
- The essential role played by activities like traditional cookery and the playing of music for immigrants all over the world
- Dozens of moving stories of ordinary daily life as an immigrant in countries all over the world and how sound helps to tell these stories