Collaborative Development of Children's Screen Content in an Era of Forced Migration Flows: Facilitating Arab-European Dialogue

This project aims to make European broadcasters, policy-makers, children's advocacy groups and content producers aware of the urgent, unprecedented, information and entertainment needs shared by hundreds of thousands of young children who have fled to Europe from Arab countries and European-born children who have watched them arrive. Thousands of Arabic-speaking families, most of them from Syria and Iraq, have taken up residence in Germany and Sweden in the last two years, while hundreds of unaccompanied refugee children have found homes in these countries and the UK. Although German public broadcasters ZDF and ARD have responded to the challenge by providing adult news services in Arabic and Arabic subtitles for other items, provision for children also needs attention. Our project will show how imaginatively produced screen content for young children could fill worrying gaps in what is currently available to children on all sides of forced migration flows at a time when they may struggle to make sense of the new environment in which they find themselves. The project objectives are to use our research findings to: 1. Alert European screen content practitioners to the media needs, wants and experiences of young Arabic-speaking migrant children (under 12) and families. 2. Create spaces for critical reflection and dialogue between European cultural gatekeepers who regulate, commission, fund, produce or comment on children's content and practitioners with experience of children's media in Arab countries. 3. Help European stakeholders to think through policy, production initiatives, public discourse and professional practice as they seek to ensure that pluralistic and high quality content is available to an increasingly diverse young audience. 4. Identify effective elements of regulation, financing, production and advocacy practice applicable to screen content aimed at young migrant children in Europe. 5. Demonstrate to key European and Arab stakeholders how children's media rights, articulated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), are fundamental to children's future participation as citizens, and prompt further research into how screen media can help migrant children develop their identities in new environments. 6. Raise awareness of the communication needs of migrant children among a wider public. European broadcasters, producers and NGOs in Europe will benefit from dialogue which generates better understanding of young Arabic-speaking audiences, allowing them to engage more effectively with young children whose lives and education have been seriously disrupted. They will benefit through the transfer of knowledge about Arabic-speaking children's media use and expectations, leading to better understanding of children's needs. The use of Arab practitioners as experts represents an innovative step towards creating new European conceptualisations of the Arab child audience, breaking with the tradition of research travelling in one direction only. The project will create increased opportunities for future collaborations and new spaces for exchanging research. Arab participants will benefit through engagement in an international conversation about children's screen media at a range of events, from the Children's Global Media Summit in Manchester in December 2017 to more intimate workshops in France and Germany.The most significant impacts of this project will be: * Changed perspectives among new stakeholders, through further dissemination of our research findings * Better understanding of the media and communications needs of child migrants by producers, policy-makers, broadcasters and advocacy groups * Policy recommendations for engaging young Arab migrant audiences; * Reports on knowledge exchange to stakeholders through presentations and reports in appropriate outlets. * Raised visibility of Arabic-speaking children's media needs and active exchange of effective practice.