Voices On The Wind
Welcome to Voices on the Wind, marking 70 years of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).
Voices on the Wind is a virtual installation of film, audio and photography that shares different perspectives of the refugee experience. Please visit our galleries "SEE", "HEAR" and "MAKE" to glimpse a sense of what it's like to be forced to flee your home.
In a reimagined reality, refugees and storytellers use multimedia to relay their journeys of displacement and outlook on the future. “I wanted to bring these journeys to the fore through the powerful eyes of children and resilient gaze of adults. These voices are carried on the wind because the wind knows no borders or boundaries.” Maya Sanbar, exhibition curator.
This preview of the upcoming film Footsteps on the Wind tells the story of animated character Noor and her little brother Joseph as they find a way to build their future despite unimaginable perils, much like some 400,000 unaccompanied refugee children worldwide at this very moment. The film is set to the refugee-inspired song by singer songwriter Sting, "Inshallah". The full film will be released in 2021 following its international festival run. It will be available on multiple platforms to be streamed and shared for trauma storytelling workshops. Its narrative blends harsh reality and tragedy with resilience as we follow the children’s magical imagination through loss and recovery.
The World Frontiers Forum is a nonprofit that brings together pioneering artists and scientists to explore the sustainable future of the human condition. This year its focus is on food, healthcare, and learning. We held last year's gathering in Berlin. This year was to be held in New York on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the United Nations — now a virtual event due to the current Covid-19 pandemic.
Food insecurity, the topic of our first podcast, while not a new subject, has worsened everywhere. We are now in the middle of a pandemic, and questions around health and trust are central. This is the topic of our second podcast, created by a compilation of interviews of experts in the field.
Finally, our third and last podcast focuses on culture and learning and the disruption that has come to over a billion students on the planet, the fears and challenges of going back to school — as well as that of cultural expression.
Cultural expression and learning are inevitably interlinked, and each acts as a bridge to survival for those who are displaced.
In this section, we invite you to take a moment and reflect on what home means to you. We often think of forced displacement as a distant reality, one that does not concern us, one to which it is hard to relate or fully comprehend. But how about we re-frame displacement through the warm and familiar prism of the notion of "home"? What does home mean to you? Can you imagine losing your home? Let alone without notice, or a chance to say goodbye?
This film was made with twenty young people from eight countries, each sharing their idea of "home" both through words and images.
Would you like to share what "home" means to you? Send your images, drawings and voice recordings to wordsonthewindboat@gmail.com. Your contributions will be used for a public art installation on the theme of "home".