What does home mean to you?/

I am a thought collector.

As an author, a migrant and a human I am very interested in the concept of belonging.  For one reason or another, we move: to other rooms in a flat, to another house up the road, to another neighbourhood, to another town, to another part of the country, to another country, to another continent… moving about is as human as language.  And as we transfer our living from place to place if not to where, then with what and with whom do we belong?

My least favourite question is:  ”How often do you go home?” often deployed by well intentioned people who fail to see the embedded go home in their question. Who gets to decide where other people belong? Who gets to define where and what home is?

Following reading Elki is not my Dog I have asked audiences of all ages how they feel about home. When launching the book in March 2024 I asked the school we visited if children would consider some ideas around home and share them in small yellow disks. I have found ideas flowing more freely in smaller less official looking paper. Their responses where then shared with people who came to the book launch, who themselves where invited to participate. Thus I was already amassing quite a collection and no two where the same.

When I was invited to the Edinburgh International Book Festival I had a great opportunity to make an installation of these thoughts about what home means, and as the festival itself had just moved into their “new home” I wanted to engage multiple audiences with this question. I asked other authors I met in the green room (what still is lovingly considered the yurt) and other people to share their own thoughts on what home meant to them. For one thing, when doing a writing workshop with children (that was my event) it is important for them to experience multiple examples not just as model but as springboards for their own ideas. For another one, through technology we are being led to operate in increasingly binary positions, and here was an opportunity to playfully explore and show a vast array of ideas as opposed to an either-or.

  • 1. On world book day I asked children in a school what they thought about home, as it is a key theme in Elki is not my Dog.

  • 2. I threaded them together to display at the book launch, where more disks were available for more thoughts.

  • 3. I took these thoughs to Edinburgh International Book Festival...

  • 4....where I asked authors and others in the green room to share their thoughts about what home meant to them...

  • 5....which I added to a growing installation of the meanings of home for our workshop (the middle section was more less empty to allow the families taking part to fill that space).

  • 6. And now I am photographing them and gradually uploading them here, ready to take the originals with me to inspire others in future events.

I was thrilled with the engagement and participation in the yurt. The inclusive and welcoming communal spirit that is tenderly nurtured by the festival creates an atmosphere where authors and other creators are really relaxed and open and this allowed me to feel confident to walk up to people and ask if they wanted to contribute a thought to my collection for the installation.  I wanted ideas to have equal footing, wether they came from authors, their relatives, staff, volunteers, participating parents or children:  everyone was given the same tools and the same question. Even after my event, thoughts were still being added, and thus I am documenting the project here. To widely share all these beautiful and welcoming ideas.

Enjoy this growing collection of meanings of home.

Bear with me, it is much quicker to pin paper disks to a wall than to digitise them!