Palestinian Childhoods: Solidarity & Ṣumūd at UCL East

Image from Palestinian Childhoods: Solidarity and Sumud exhibition poster. Credit: Photograph: Ahmed Al Daalsa. Balloons: Laura. Concept: Aya Battiri and Mahmoud Hussein.

16 September 2025

By Feryal Awan and Rachel Rosen

From 1–14 September 2025, UCL East’s Marshgate Building hosted Palestinian Childhoods: Solidarity & Ṣumūd, a landmark exhibition that wove together photographs, letters, sound and objects accompanied by a series of events. It created a space of solidarity for Palestine within the university – urgently needed at a time when silence too often dominates institutional life, as Feryal is finding in her current research about the experiences of primary school teachers and students in London as they speak out for Palestine.

Image credit: Courtesy of Rachel Rosen.

The exhibition responded to the insights of children in Palestine, seeking to witness and convey their struggle for everyday life, love, play and learning in the face of loss and brutality. Children in the West Bank, for example, have faced arbitrary detention, state and settler violence, and forced displacement under what has been termed Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid. Turning to Gaza, there is a growing global consensus, including a recent resolution issued by leading international scholars, that Israel is committing a genocide against Palestinians.

Tens of thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza have been killed, wounded, displaced and subjected to starvation by Israel since October 2023. But, as young Palestinians remind the world: “We are not numbers” – a statement and sentiment encapsulated in the name of an organisation dedicated to raising the voices of young people in Gaza. The organisation was co-founded by Refaat Alareer, a brilliant Palestinian poet, professor and alumni of UCL who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in December 2023.

The idea of being more than a number or a ‘single story’ resonated with our own research with marginalised children. For example, in Rachel’s research with unaccompanied young migrants in the UK, participants often discussed experiencing reductive and racist dehumanisation and even made a film entitled Stories too big for a case file.

The assertion of lives that are ‘more than numbers’ became an inspiration for the exhibition, which invited audiences to imagine what Gaza looks, sounds and feels like for Palestinian children. In the opening section, entitled ‘Art Against Genocide’, Ahmed Al Daalsa’s black-and-white photographs of children in Gaza, taken since October 2023, portray daily life as it unfolds amid devastation. The images juxtapose children’s everyday activities with the wreckage of collapsed infrastructures and the constant threat of violence.

These photographs were enriched by Aya Battiri and Mahmoud Hussein, with an installation of everyday objects that carry deep symbolic weight. A jerrycan stood in for the harsh reality of water scarcity, while a flour sack stained red evoked what UN experts have condemned as the flour massacres, where Israeli forces fired on crowds of Palestinians who had gathered to collect flour. Fragments of rubble in a school bag served as an emotive and visual archive of the destruction of over 90% of Gaza’s homes and schools. The objects were accompanied by a haunting soundscape with children’s voices interwoven with the relentless buzzing of Israeli drones (zanana).

At the exhibition’s centre stood ‘Grief and Rage’, a collection of three of Samer Abdelnour’s bronze sculptures. One of these, Refaat’s Angel, depicts a figure from If I Must Die, the last poem written by Dr Refaat Alareer. The sculpture is a tribute to Dr Alareer’s life and legacy, but also a reminder of the importance of honouring those who learnt with us, taught us and inspired us – a call student groups at UCL have been making to the administration since Dr Alareer’s killing.

Samer Abdelnour’s Refaat’s Angel. Image credit: Courtesy of Rachel Rosen.

The exhibition’s closing section, Letters for Palestinian Childhoods, brought together an international and multigenerational collection of letters, drawings and poems produced for the children of Palestine. We have been curating this collection since November 2023, part of our research and public engagement about colonised childhoods and in response to the targeting of Palestinian children by Israel. Some of the letters were displayed at the IOE in October 2024. In the larger space at UCL East, we were able to present an expanded part of the collection accompanied by a multilingual soundscape, amplifying words and images with voices.

This gathering of artwork was made possible through extraordinary cross-departmental support at UCL. The exhibition and events were developed, curated and coordinated by an interdisciplinary team from UCL, of which we were a part. Financial contributions came from across the Institute of Education, including the Social Research Institute and the Department of Culture, Communication and Media, as well as from the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences and the School for Cultural and Creative Industries. Such broad collaboration shows how solidarity can move across academic boundaries, bringing together scholars, artists, and communities in common purpose.

Hundreds of people visited the space over the two-week exhibition, commenting on the power of the work in conveying Palestinian children’s ṣumūd, an Arabic word meaning steadfastness, and international solidarity. Reflecting on their experiences of the exhibition, UCL students commented:

 “What I liked most was that the exhibition opened a space for voices that are normally excluded. It made me hope that this isn’t just a temporary gesture but the beginning of something more long-term.”

“The exhibition created an important moment of collective reflection and solidarity in the university. It reminded me that education and activism can intersect in powerful, necessary ways.”

Many children and young people also attended, with one commenting:

“It made me realise how important it is to speak up.”

Their reflections highlight that the exhibition not only bore witness to the experiences of Palestinian children and their communities but fostered critical awareness and a sense of responsibility among all who visited. For us, this exhibition has been profound and moving, but it is not enough. To witness brings with it responsibility – a responsibility to act against injustice well beyond gallery walls.