The Project

The aim of the RESPECT project was to begin to understand the experiences and impacts of racism on 10 – 11 year olds, and provide recommendations on how schools might better support children and teachers.

An interdisciplinary team from the University of the West of England, Bristol with expertise in race, education and psychology, together with a socially-engaged artist worked with children in three inner city schools in Bristol to understand more about the impact of racism on children.

The project used the creative, arts based approach of body mapping that allowed young people to reflect on their own lived experiences of racism. The children drew around each other on large sheets of paper to create a life size outline.

Once the children had their outline to work with, the team supported them to think about how external events around racism made them feel inside, recording these in the parts of their body outline where they experienced the feelings.

Why use Art?

The project used creative engagement as it offered children the chance to reflect on their own lived experiences, and allowed the research team some insight into their perceptions and meaning making. Creative processes can enable people to express themselves in emotionally accurate ways and allows some insight into the nuances and complexities of the young people’s feelings and their situations.

In addition the children completed measures of wellbeing before and after the body mapping activity and participated in focus groups where they discussed the process of participating in the workshops. The team also interviewed the children’s teachers.

What we found

The research has highlighted that young children are deeply affected by institutional racism as depicted by the media through coverage of national and international incidents, as well as through their personal experiences or that of their friends and family. Children reported feeling a host of emotions including being scared, frightened, shamed, powerless and frustrated. Many young people were angry at what they had seen and heard, felt unsafe and sad.

The Book – If Racism Vanished for a Day

The book arose from the idea that we wanted to enable the children to talk in a positive way about themselves and their lives.

We made sentence starters from the themes identified in the research data and in a series of arts workshop the children drew pictures which they felt illustrated the identified themes.

The children’s illustrations were collected and curated by Luci Gorell Barnes and the outcome was the book ‘If Racism Vanished for a Day’ – of which we are all immensely proud.

You can read the book here

The book includes a series of questions to ensure that readers can become fully engaged with what the children are saying.