The symposium Invisible Children: Children’s Media, Diversity and Forced Migration presented the findings from our three workshops, in Manchester, Copenhagen and Munich, focused around issues of diversity including screen content that has been – or could be – made for and about Arabic-speaking and other children newly arrived in Europe through forced migration.

Bringing together key players involved in producing, regulating, funding, commissioning and commenting on children’s screen media in Europe, the symposium launched a Project Report to Stakeholders including recommendations arising from these European-Arab exchanges. With four sessions focused on diversity involving practitioners, diversity advocates and academics, the symposium considered the challenges and opportunities for showing diversity in a range of children’s content across a variety of platforms.

Symposium Coordinators: Professor Jeanette Steemers (King’s College London), Professor Naomi Sakr (University of Westminster).

Moderator and speakers included: George Alain (Open University), Asmaa Azizi (Université Lille), Feryal Awan (University of Westminster), Gregory Boardman (Three Stones Media), Sophie Chalk (International Broadcasting Trust), Marion Creely (World Summit on Media for Children/Dublin bid), Joy Francis (Words of Colour), Marie Gillespie (Open University), Maya Goetz (International Central Institute for Youth and Educational Television), Imene Guemar (King’s College London), Nathalie Habib (Blink Studios), Kez Margrie (BBC Children’s), Maire Messenger Davis (Ulster University), Milica Pesic (Media Diversity Institute), Beryl Richards (European Broadcasting Union), Tarik Sabry (University of Westminster), Roza Tsagarousianou (University of Westminster), Sally-Ann Wilson (Public Media Alliance), Shakuntala Banaji (London School of Economics), Sharif Al Zoubi (Roya TV).

Outputs

• Project Report to Stakeholders
• Symposium Report
• Symposium Slides
• Symposium Reviews