The Migration Museum is proud to have partnered with the Hay Festival to bring you the personal migration stories of some of the brilliant speakers at this year’s celebration of literature, arts and culture.

We invited speakers at the festival to share their migration stories in the form of short videos and handwritten story discs.

We are honoured to share these stories with you below – click on the images to watch the videos (the links open in Instagram).

This year’s George Alagiah Memorial Lecture at the Festival, delivered by our Trustee, Professor David Olusoga OBE, was also in support of us – see below for more details and to watch the lecture.

We are truly grateful to the Alagiah Family, to the team at Hay, and to all of the speakers who shared their migration stories with us.

Julia Gillard

Former Prime Minister of Australia

“My family are not singers. We used to joke that we were the only non-singing Welsh on the planet. My father continued to follow Wales in the rugby, and he definitely wanted us to understand Wales’ literary traditions.” 

Hear from Julia Gillard, former Prime Minister of Australia, as she shares her family’s story of emigrating from Barry in south Wales to Adelaide, South Australia, in 1966. Her family arrived as one of the many ‘Ten Pound Poms’ – a scheme that offered subsidised passage to Australia for over a million British citizens.

David Miliband

President of the International Rescue Committee and former UK Foreign Secretary

Hear from David Miliband, President of the International Rescue Committee and former UK Foreign Secretary, as he shares how his parents came to the UK as Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution – his dad from Belgium and his mum from Poland – and reflects on how stories like theirs have always been part of British history.

 

Kamila Shamsie

Author

“A lot of people often talk about home as though it is a single place and you’re expected to have one answer or to feel conflicted.”

Hear from award-winning Pakistani and British novelist Kamila Shamsie as she shares her story of moving from Pakistan to the UK through a specialist visa category for writers that no longer exists – and of following in the footsteps of her mother and grandfather, who both went to school in England.

 

Liv Little

Author, creative director and broadcaster

“Without their love story, I wouldn’t be here, so thank you mum for smoking all of dad’s cigarettes at the house party – it’s great.”

Hear from author, creative director and broadcaster Liv Little as she shares the story of how her Jamaican-born dad met her mum at a house party one summer’s evening in London – and fell madly in love.

 

Tahmima Anam

Author

“He was never expected to leave that village. No one in his family had ever left the village. But when he was a teenager, he was given a scholarship and he was able to leave the village and travel to Calcutta, which was the nearest big city.”

Hear from Bangladeshi-born British writer, novelist and columnist Tahmima Anam, as she shares her family’s incredible transnational migration story – from a small village in Muslim Bengal, to Kolkata, Bangladesh, Paris, and finally, London.

 

Kirsty Lang

Journalist and broadcaster

“My grandfather was born in Calcutta, and that’s because my great-grandfather, also Scottish, was working for the Indian civil service.”

Hear from BBC journalist Kirsty Lang as she shares her family’s deep connections to the British Empire, and a story of emigration that stretches from Scotland and India all the way to Australia.

 

The George Alagiah Memorial Lecture – in support of the Migration Museum

This year’s George Alagiah Memorial Lecture at the Hay Festival was in support of the Migration Museum.

George Alagiah OBE was a passionate supporter, a remarkable trustee and a true friend and champion of the Migration Museum – and this annual lecture celebrates the issues central to his work: migration, the power of the global majority and questions of representation.

The lecture was delivered by Migration Museum Trustee Professor David Olusoga, who discussed the history and legacy of the British Empire and how colonial nostalgia is shaping contemporary geopolitics, with journalist and broadcaster Kirsty Lang. The lecture was introduced by Aditi Anand, our Artistic Director.

Image credits:
Stills from collaborative reels recorded by the Migration Museum at the Hay Festival (Credits: Migration Museum)
Professor David Olusoga OBE delivers the George Alagiah Memorial Lecture in support of the Migration Museum at the Hay Festival (Credit: Adam Tatton-Reid and Hay Festival)