I Packed This Myself - suitcase exhibition
I Packed This Myself is a Bridging Arts project looking at the experience of migrant workers in Cornwall. We started in 2006 by working with workers from eastern Europe, working on the land in west Cornwall: at that time, many were isolated and faced discrimination. They were mostly housed in caravans on farms, due to local housing shortages.
We also identified another group of workers facing discrimination – the Portuguese in the Bodmin/St Austell area of Cornwall, who were mostly working in the meat processing industry.
With these groups of workers, we created and designed an exhibition of suitcases. These suitcases in some cases showed the items that the migrant workers had brought with them to the UK.
In other cases, they posed questions. We presented a ‘mirror’ suitcases, suggesting that anyone could be a migrant worker.
This show was expanded by work by students from University College Falmouth, who created suitcases posing further questions.
Click on the images below for a photogallery of the exhibition at DMT Galleries, Camborne, Cornwall in March/April 2009.
Photographs by Julian Barford/University College Falmouth
