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Digital exhibition

As part of the Borderscapes Project’s engagement with schools, pupils were asked to create an artefact representing their identity. In particular, students were encouraged to reflect on the place in which they live, the languages and cultures that they are familiar with and the way they relate to the natural world.

Pupils responded to the brief in rich and varied ways. Some reflected on how they engage with nature; some took the opportunity to express their local and national identities, while others considered climate responsibility.

The Borderscapes Digital Exhibition showcases these artefacts. Our approach to curating the exhibition was inspired by the work of the international research project Children’s Cultural Heritage: The Visual Voices of the Archive (and its linked institution, the Swedish Archive of Children’s Art), which explores how children can be cultural heritage producers (Sparrman, et. al: 2024). This approach emphasises that:

  • Child-produced cultural objects are historical landmarks
  • Children are, and always have been, a significant group in our societies
  • Children, like any other group, produce and re-produce the societies in which they live

In curating the exhibition, we adopted approaches inspired by the practices of the Swedish Archive of Children’s Art to centre the pupils within the exhibition itself. Firstly, every image on the Borderscapes Digital Exhibition, from backgrounds to buttons, is taken from an artefact produced by a pupil as part of the project. To provide a truly immersive experience, the main exhibition features a soundscape from our workshops with the pupils.

While the exhibition itself showcases certain artefacts, all artefacts submitted for the project were included in the digital repository on the exhibition’s website. We also included a page of pupil reflections – both oral and textual – of their time on the project, so users can listen to and read about how the project shaped pupils’ understandings of language and borders and, more broadly, their lives.

Finally, where possible, we included participants’ written explanations of their artefacts to provide important context. It was clear in the process of selecting artefacts for the exhibition that an artefact ‘came to life’ when it was viewed alongside its textual explanation. Doing so centred the pupil participants in the ‘meaning-making’ of their artefacts, and limited scope for misinterpretation.

We were blown away by the quality and creativity shown in the artefacts produced for the project, and we are delighted to be able to showcase them permanently in the open-access digital exhibition.