“Often the deepest pain empowers you to grow into your highest self, but it can also destroy all your ambitions and dreams,” Asha, 21, Kids Company.
Outside the Royal Academy, a billowing, brightly coloured banner draws you in to the venerably institution’s latest exhibition: “Childhood: the real event”. Take up the invitation and you’ll see the work of children from across London exploring their real life stories.
Wandering through the first corridor, which is draped in acetate slides of children’s dreams for the future – varying from the widespread hope to play for Arsenal to the occasional aspiration towards a medical degree and, most touchingly, the hope to be loved – you are transported into another world. In the first room, with four large installations of sculpture, sound and video, is a world dominated by fear and distress. In the second room, coated in paintings, fashion, poetry and installations, the dominant tone is one of frank honesty. The third room, which features a selection of reflections and stories in all forms, is a world of healing, the last one a world of hope. These are the worlds of the “lone children”, of whom are there are between 1.5 and 2 million in the UK – children who, whether in care, living with parents or fending for themselves, are subject to maltreatment.
Kids Company was established in 1996 by Camila Batmanghelidjh to act as an advocate, a therapist and a carer to these children. The exhibition at the Royal Academy is just one example of the work the organisation does with maltreated children and young people in London. It is beautiful, tough and, above all, moving. Speaking to the New Statesman, Batmanghelidjh agrees: “I’ve been doing this job for 20 years and I’m moved by it.”
Kids Company describes the service it offers to children and young people as “reparenting”, giving lone children who have suffered trauma and maltreatment access to key workers who fulfill a parental role in everything from attending parents’ evenings and taking them to school to helping with immigration law and council housing. Batmanghelidjh says:
It’s about not silo-ing these kids and their issues. If you don’t have a pair of shoes or you’re hungry it will impact right across your day. So it’s no good saying “we’re only in mental health provision” or “we’re only in housing provision” if you don’t address the rest of the things then what you provide isn’t robust.
Kids Company, above all, is a sanctuary to these children, away from trauma, maltreatment and fear. Batmanghelidjh says the project at the Royal Academy has offered the children involved the chance to work with artists as a form of therapy and an opportunity to tell their own stories:
The exhibition will give them a sense of pride and dignity and also diminish their invisibility. A lot of these children lead these lives in secret; these lives are not reflected back on the TV with them as the daily lives of children. By putting it in the public space in such a way, what we’re saying to the children is “your life experience is legitimate, it’s worth communicating and it’s important”
One of them, Karl Lokko, describes the children who took part in the exhibition as having been exposed to trauma at “ages where they’re not able to grasp totally what algebra is, never mind figure out the equations of life”. But their stories are awe-inspiring.
Children: The Real Story runs until 22 July at the Royal Academy, 12pm to 6pm, Tuesday to Sunday. Entrance is free.
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