Before, Now, After

Sarah Philp, used a visual explorer approach with the young people in Aberdeenshire to understand their experiences before they moved to Scotland, now they were here and what they hoped for the future.

In the images below, the child described their life before Scotland in Egypt and how busy it was, how close together things were and how there was a lot of things going on at one time. The middle picture is about how he feels now, living in Scotland which he describes as ‘so pretty and green’. His hopes for the future are to be clean and bright and hopes to be an engineer, or maybe a football player.

The next set of images describe feelings of loneliness and isolation when the child first came to Scotland, how they were scared and didn't know what to do, but as they started to make friends at school they felt more safe and less lonely. They started to enjoy their life in Scotland and looking forward to the future that they see as being happy and hopefully being a footballer.

These images were chosen by the child reflecting on his life in Ukraine and remembering times he would spend with friends playing football, he said that he was always playing football in Ukraine. The seedlings he said represent a new life in Scotland he also reflected that he knows he won’t get to go back to Ukraine, but he would like to. For him the seedlings represent his growing confidence in his life in Scotland. The third image he selected is about his dreams of travelling to new places, he wants to travel more in Europe. He also said that the image represents calmness and he spoke about his experiences with diving and that the hardest part of diving is about staying calm. When he was asked more about how he manages his own feelings of calm, he said that he tells himself. I am safe, I am safe, I am safe.