Waving Hello

Inspired by realising that all the NHS staff caring for her dying mother were born outside the UK, and fortified by a museum visit where she realised that art has always crossed borders, Isabel Knowland, a local musician, has spent the last six months creating an exploration of migration, called 'Waving Hello'. Local schoolchildren, refugees and people who are locked up in the immigration detention centre just outside Oxford have been talking, writing poetry and making paper boats. These are some of the 2,500 boats that were launched in Bonn Square in the middle of Oxford today, the last day of the project and the last day of Refugee Week. Each boat represents two people who drowned in the Mediterranean last year looking for a better life.