Moving Hearts: Exploring 'the right to belong' in the UK

Professor Anna Reading and Dr Jim Bjork, from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at King’s, worked with Australian artist Penny Ryan to create the Moving Hearts project – consisting of sculpting workshops, forums to discuss personal experiences and connections to migration, and an interactive installation at the Migration Museum.   

Discussing the motivation behind the community building project, Professor Anna Reading said: “Particularly after the UK referendum vote, I felt it was important to bring communities together and allow us to talk openly about our different stories of migration that make London, and make the UK.”  

Fazilat Rani, a member of the Mora School Women’s Project who took part in Moving Hearts, said that she couldn’t imagine a better way to remind ourselves of how we are all connected.

She reflected on her own migration experience, saying: “Some people have no choice to leave their country. Some people do have the choice. I left my country for my kids’ futures, but it can be hard to manage in a new one. We are all human and this world doesn’t belong to anyone. We are here to share it.”

The project was funded by the PLuS Alliance, an international partnership between King's, Arizona State University and UNSW Sydney that is dedicated to solving global challenges through research, education, and innovation. 

 Managing Director of PLuS Alliance, Paul Ramadge said: “The PLuS Alliance is delighted to support this collaboration. Moving Hearts is a unique and innovative project that seeks to challenge our perspectives on a global issue, and is at the core of what we hope to achieve through the PLuS Alliance.”