Belonging: A Postdigital Space for Migrant Communities’ Voices

Belonging is a multimedia artistic project that displays portraits and stories of migrant and refugee women who came from all around the world, for many different reasons, to settle permanently in Aotearoa New Zealand. Based on interviews with these women, Belonging revisits their personal journeys of migration, retelling some of the main challenges and achievements faced by each participant. The project was physically displayed at a theatre and a library, and digitally published as part of an online heritage website collection, simultaneously congregating close and remote spaces, whilst reaching out to diverse audiences. In framing Belonging as a postdigital learning space, this chapter discusses the coming together of a hybrid learning space that included multi-spatial (physical and online) environment and the diasporic identities (multicultural migration) of a multi-ethnic group of women. The project favoured non-traditional opportunities of learning for a general audience, to foster connections between local and distant narratives, at multiple spaces, and between diverse groups of people. It included cross-generation and transnational learning, involving people from diverse backgrounds. This chapter seeks to contribute to debates on the use of postdigital media to disseminate migrant perspectives inside interdisciplinary contexts creating a dialogue between education, arts, and cultural studies.