[wzslider autoplay=”true” info=”true”]“Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow” is Paris-based research & educational Non-Profit, developing comprehensive educational, as well as communication tools, to facilitate global refugee/migrant understanding and integration.
The project, that invites refugees and migrants to make three drawings, one of their past (Yesterday), their present (Today) and their future lives (Tomorrow), was established by Irish, Paris-based contemporary artist Bryan McCormack in 2016. Along with a team of volunteers, they have collected thousands of drawings from people age 3 to 70, of around 50 nationalities, in around 30 camps, squats and centres, across ten countries, in Europe and North Africa.
Now, the project has been brought to Bosnia-Herzegovina, specifically to Sarajevo, where the team are also working in partnership with the International University of Sarajevo, the Balkan Studies Centre and local charities supporting refugees in the city.
“These drawings define the YTT visual language, a raw, emotional and explicative language that speaks logically and directly to the audience, independently of dialect, nationality or education.” McCormack explained.
Each of the drawings, collected mostly from children and young people, along with a brief description stating an individual’s gender, nationality, age and the location the drawing was made, is scanned and then uploaded on to the projects social media pages. The team are also currently working with a number of European universities in the Czech Republic Italy, and the IUS in BiH, to develop an Educational App and online support platform, of which the drawings are the basis for, that can be used around the World, adapted to every national education system. The team will continue to work around Bosnia-Herzegovina over the next few years in and around Sarajevo, as well in the North-West of BiH,in Bihać and Velika Kladuša.
The project’s Communications Manager also added:
“I feel this project can also serve as a database of evidence – to document what happened to these individuals. Every single one of these drawings, these stories that we have collected as a team, could I hope, one day be used to hold those who have committed such acts of atrocity and violence, to account.”
Written by Elizabeth Pennington, Image courtesy of YTT
