DAR Digital Residency

From 1 -30 September 2017, Jules Findley has been selected as Artist in Residence at Digital Artist Residency DAR http://digitalartistresidency.org/ working with Linda Duvall http://www.lindaduvall.com/ in a project called, CONVERSATION OVERSEAS
Over the course of the month, we will be discussing the Maternal LOSS the unresolved grief of the distraught mothers who lost their children in the Child Migration Programme that affected over 130,000 children, through our creative on-line conversation between England, Canada and Singapore.

A bit about the Child Migration Programme: The forced Child Migration Programme was about thousands of young children who were sent alone, without choice to the ‘colonies’, mostly Commonwealth countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), leaving in ships from Liverpool, Glasgow, Plymouth and London, from Tilsbury and Gravesend. The project started in 1859 and ended in 1970’s, where over 130,000 child migrants were sent overseas on a project endorsed by the upper classes, with various charities involved – one in the name of the Prince of Wales, which raised money to buy land for farms for the children to work there. It was once thought to be convenient, promised as life enhancing for children to be shipped out, with the colonies gaining what was termed as healthy ‘white stock’. Often siblings were split up and frequently sent to different countries, they were lied to about their mothers being alive. Some children went to homes where the children were genuinely looked after, but others were sent to farms where they were cruelly abused on all levels and exploited for their work on the farms.