The Art of Identity: Generation Peace and European Identities

ESRC Festival of Social Science

November 12, 2022 at the Ulster Museum

Our research team had a fantastic time hosting the Art of Identity: Generation Peace during the ESRC Festival of Social Science, held at the Ulster Museum in November 2022. The aim of the event was to display children’s drawings from the different research settings about ‘peace’ and ‘Europe,’ and key quotes from child interviews in an interactive Art Exhibit. The event was put on by the Kids in Context Lab at Queen’s University Belfast and the Helping Kids! lab at UCD. 

This was a family friendly event intended to share our research findings with local families to engage interest, as well as try to help families start a conversation around the topics.

About the Research Project

The Kids in Context Lab at Queen’s University Belfast and Helping Kids! lab at University College Dublin collaboratively conduct research with children across the globe. In this project, we worked with children in four European societies: Croatia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of North Macedonia. Each society has in common a history of conflict and enduring division. For example, children in each of these societies attend different schools, or sessions of the same school, by ethno-religious background. Yet, each society has a unique history marked by a peace agreement, and different relationships with the European Union.

Using the Draw-and-Tell method (e.g., Driessnack, 2006), children drew pictures exploring the topics ‘peace’ and ‘Europe,’ and responded to open-ended questions about their understanding of a local or ethnic identity and their European identity. For example, they were asked “Whenever you think of peace or groups of people getting along, what do you think of?” In response to this question, an 8-year-old from Northern Ireland drew a picture and described it as “group of friends holding hands.” Another answer from an 8-year-old from Kosovo said, “It is nice to me because there are no more wars and there are no bomb holes everywhere, everything is peaceful now.” This study allowed an exploration of children’s perceptions of peace and European identity growing up in conflict-affected areas.

Using interview and survey measures, we also worked with another 442 children aged 7-11 participated from across the four conflict-affected sites (Taylor, Corbett, Maloku, Humer, Tomovska Misoska & Dautel, 2023). We found that children’s social identification with Europe differed depending on the context and their group membership. For example, in Northern Ireland, children from Catholic backgrounds identified more strongly as European than children from Protestant backgrounds, while in Kosovo, group membership did not seem to affect the strength of identification with Europe. These patterns vary with each country’s socio-historical context, demonstrating the importance of studying #KidsInContext.

The study’s findings suggest that stronger identification with Europe, as a subordinate group membership, promotes more positive attitudes and prosocial behaviour to those in other groups. You can read more about the findings in the European Journal of Developmental Psychology: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17405629.2023.2200930.

About the event

In order to make this exhibition as interactive and as fun as possible, we had several different activities ongoing on the day. A drawing station was set up for children to make their own drawings around ‘peace’ and ‘where I live.’ They then hung up these on a wall, creating a lovely display. We were so pleased that so many families came along, and all of the children seemed to enjoy the activities! Altogether, we had 33 drawings of ‘Peace’, 10 of ‘Europe’, and 34 of ‘Where I Live.’ See some of the beautiful displays and the art by the talented children below!

A museum scavenger hunt was also organised for the children. This allowed children not only to explore our own exhibit, but also seek out different artefacts of the museum focused on the topic of peace and where they live. This could’ve helped to aid cultivate understanding, as well as potentially educate around past conflict and the attempts for peace that have come as a result.

We also used this opportunity to recruit for future studies. This included an opportunity for families to sign up to be contacted in the future, as well as pilot studies happening on the day in a separate room for families that wished to take part there and then.

Several raffles were organised as part of this event. The first was a hamper of art supplies which was awarded at random to an individual who had signed up to be included in studies. The second was for a family W5 voucher which was awarded at random to someone who had completed the scavenger hunt. Finally, a social media competition was held for families to post their pictures and tag our page and event in order to be given a chance to win. The prize for this one was a family pass for Streamvale farm.

A visitor of the exhibit said: “An enjoyable, and extremely thought-provoking experience. My son loved the workshop – the crayons, pencils, drawing his idea of peace, and interacting with other children and families doing the same. Within this, we all had an opportunity to reflect on how children make sense of conflict, and peace and national identity. It was interesting to see similarities and differences between post-conflict societies across Europe. I feel I got a better understanding of a child’s perspective of living in our post-conflict society. If he were a bit older, I imagine it would give us a conversation starter to see how he makes sense of himself, the city and our communities. I also took a moment to reflect on my own perspective. When I was my son’s age, it was the middle of The Troubles and wondered what I might have drawn if presented with the same task.”

In order to evaluate the success of our event, we surveyed parents and children upon entry and exit, as well as monitoring social media likes, shares, and replies.

The children's survey had only two questions: 1) Did you like learning about kids in other places?  and 2) Did you like learning about peace? The kids had the opportunity to answer these questions by pressing a button on a tablet.

On the day, we had 25 children take our survey to get their feedback on the event. We found that 100% of them liked learning about kids in other places, and 96% liked learning about peace!

For adults, 31 responded to our pre- and post-event survey. Adults were more likely to agree with the statement ‘I think the next generation can build peace’ after they had viewed the exhibit and participated in the event, compared to when they entered.

We interpret these findings as meaning we should hold the event again…soon! Please stay tuned for our next event coming in November 2023!