Heart of the Nation
An exhibition celebrates people who moved to Britain to work for the NHS.
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has been taking care of the nation for 76 years. It’s the UK’s largest employer, with a workforce of 1.6 million people. A new exhibition at the Migration Museum, in Lewisham, London, called Heart of the Nation, tells the stories of the workers that make up the NHS. It shines a light on people who left their homes in other countries to come to the UK and work for the service.
Heart of the Nation is an in-person event at the Migration
Museum and also a digital exhibition that is viewable online. The digital version uses photos, passports, film, audio and animations (including one narrated by author Michael Rosen). The idea is to share the experiences of NHS workers from countries including Ghana, Guyana, India, Iraq, Jamaica, Pakistan and the Philippines.
The Migration Museum’s
Mona Jamil told The Week Junior she wanted the digital exhibition to feel, “exciting and to have movement, even though you are looking at it through a screen.”
The stories of NHS workers from the last seven decades cover what it was like working in the NHS and the shock of arriving in a new country. It also looks at how immigrant communities supported each other and the challenges they faced as they settled in Britain. Jamil is proud that her family’s experiences feature in the exhibition. Her dad migrated from Iraq to work in the NHS, leading to Jamil moving to the UK herself.
She describes the exhibition as a “beautiful space” and encourages The Week Junior readers to share their stories of migration and the NHS so they can be included in the exhibition. You can share your stories at tinyurl.com/TWJ-share and view the digital exhibition at tinyurl.com/TWJ-heart