DIVERSITY, REPRESENTATION, INCLUSION, NORM CRITIQUE
DRIN – Visions for Children's Books

The library of Goethe-Institut Finnland is located in Kamppi, Helsinki, and offers a wide selection on (diverse) children's books. Lending is free of charge. Here we have gathered some examples of our offering on children's books.

The Onleihe is Goethe-Institut’s digital library. More than 23,000 German language eBooks, audio books, movies, materials for German language learners, magazines and newspapers are available for downloading from the Onleihe.

Student Juho Salorinne reviews the workshop held by illustrator Trilce García at the Helsinki German School as part of the DRIN school visits co-organised with Lukukeskus (Finnish Reading Center) in autumn 2022.
 

As part of the DRIN writers’ and illustrators workshop that is currently ongoing, Andrea Karimé offers her reflections on multilingualism and poetical writing for children. This is a transcript of her lecture.

The intercultural and anti-racist platform #StopHatredNow takes place virtually in May. The event creates new discourse on diversity, inclusivity, power structures and intersectionally feminist strategies. This year’s theme is Reshaping Horizons of Hope.

Welcome to the DRIN book club to discuss diverse children’s literature! This time with the illustrator Warda Ahmed and Gabriele Koné (ista – Institut für den Situationsansatz). For everyone reading, making and using children's books!

Panel discussion during the conference for "Rasism sensitive Education and Teaching in Schools and Universities". Chantal-Fleur Sandjon from the DRIN-project takes part.

Welcome to the DRIN book club to discuss diverse children’s literature! The third book club will be with the editor Arina Stoenescu based in Sweden and Gabriele Koné from ista – Institut für den Situationsansatz, Berlin. Welcome to join!

Who writes the children's books that we find in bookshops and libraries? The participants to the discussion bring their own view of children's book and represent different positions on the topic. 

At the event in Oodi, the participants discuss about their experiences with a writing workshop: What kind of stories have they worked on in the workshop? What is special about writing for (BIPOC ) children? What is it like to work as a BIPOC writer in Finland? What kind of a world would we like to write for children? What are the utopias and dreams of the participants and instructors?

Children’s books are becoming more and more diverse, reflecting the reality in a diverse society. Still, the writers of those books are still rarely as diverse as the society itself, authors of Color, with experiences of racism, migration and/or flight, are strongly underrepresented on the children’s book market. Thus, this workshop aims at empowering BIPOC that are interested in or are already writing books for children.

How to approach character building with focus on non-binary figures. How do you draw someone outside the gender binary? What are the things to consider? How can we empower each other through drawing? EL BOUM and Warda Ahmed host a workshop in Gothenburg/ Sweden.

Welcome to the DRIN bookclub! This fourth book club will be joined by Jolana Pons and Vera Göckelmann from "Sei kein Hasenfuß e.V.". Join us in the discussion!

The current tendencies and positions regarding the diversity in children's literature will be discussed in the form of presentations and lectures. 

Diversity in German children's literature is an important topic especially from the perspective of representation and different perspectives. That is why this event series concentrates on the potential of BIPOC writers. 

Welcome to the DRIN book club to discuss diverse children’s literature! The fifth book club is with the researcher Aminkeng A. Alemanji, the topic is Alemanji´s study regarding the children's book "Bibi muuttaa Suomeen" (Bibi moves to Finland) by Katja Kallio and Maggie Lindholm and with Mona Eid who gives a book tip for educators and impressions from her podcast "Kaikkien koulu?"

Storyteller Simone Schümmelfeder introduces new children’s books written in German as well as books from Ireland and discusses them with children. The young audience is invited to share their ideas of diversity in books.

Kolibrí, an art festival for children in the Metropolitan area, organizes a multilingual storytelling afternoon for listeners from 4 years of age. Stories will be read in German, Somali, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. The event also focuses on diverse children’s books from Europe since these books – with regard to authorship, characters and plots – are still far from being as diverse as the children speaking those languages and the societies they grow up in.

In collaboration with the German Academy for children and youth literature the project DRIN co-hosts Friday evening reading sessions. Via Zoom a variety of authors will be reading their stories and converse with the audience. 

Welcome to the DRIN book club to discuss diverse children’s literature! Guests this time: the author Sope Martins and the illustrator Abdulkareem Baba Aminu present the books Teju's Shadow and The Greatest Animal in the Jungle by Sope Martins, and There's an Elephant in My Wardrobe and Juba And The Fireball by Yejide Kilanko. 

Van 6 t/m 31 oktober staat ‚Worden wat je wil‘ centraal in het Kinderboekenmuseum. Het is dit jaar het thema van de Kinderboekenweek en waar je kun je nu beter ontdekken wat het inhoudt om schrijver te worden? In een boek kan alles! 

How diverse is the children’s book industry? Who are the players in the field? How do the publishing houses work both in Germany and abroad to push equal participation in the book market for everyone, so that all the children and their families can find books to identify with? In the context of the Frankfurter Buchmesse, the project “DRIN – Visions for Children’s Books” organizes a panel discussion relating the topic.

Reading for school classes. Ayşe Bosse reads from her moving and funny children's book "Pembo – Halb und halb macht doppelt glücklich!". In the story Pembo has to leave its dear home village in Turkey and move to Germany, "the most terrible country in the world". But in the end everything is not as bad as Pembo thinks in the beginning... 

The seventh book club this year is with the author Veronica Salinas and her children's book series with the little duck e.g. "The Voyage"; and we will also discuss diverse children's literature in Germany. Everyone is welcome to the book club: parents, teachers, kindergarten teachers, librarians as well as everyone else working with or using children’s books.

How to expand diversity, high-quality and equal accessibility to art and culture activities for all children? How to affirm diversity and identity through children’s art and culture? The panelists will share best practices, lessons learned, new ideas that can be applied as well as new questions and challenges to meet.

This event is aimed at Black, Indigenous, People of Colour in children’s literature publishing – we welcome all BIPOC (established and emerging) writers, illustrators, editors, publishers, librarians, and more! The evening will include an engaging input, a networking session, book speed-dating, and an open space session where you can share your latest projects and ideas. 

This one-day seminar brings together the learnings and networks that have been created in the DRIN project since 2018. It will take a look at the structures behind the book by giving the word to the different actors. We will also launch the publication In Our Own Words: BIPOC Perspectives in Children's Literature that was created as part of the DRIN project and which focuses on the importance of bringing more diversity not only to the stories but to the structures of the book industry as well.
Participation possible at place or via stream.

Open call for a Europe-wide free online workshop for BIPOC illustrators and authors is now open! If you are interested in developing your artistic skills and creating with fellow emerging BIPOC artists, have a look at the details of the workshop and join us. 

 

How to realise a group comic compilation about body politics between Finnish and Berlin artists? At Helsinki Comics Festival Patu, El Boum, Warda Ahmed, Nam-Ke, and Maryam ”Mellu” Abuzaid-Ryu will discuss this topic.

What can be done to promote diversity, representation, inclusion and norm critique in children’s literature? Since 2018, our project DRIN - Visions for Children's Books has attempted to address these questions and more. Join the conversation with Finnish comics illustrator and DRIN expert, Warda Ahmed, and DRIN project coordinator, Amiirah Salleh-Hoddin, at the Helsinki Book Fair 2022.

In an increasingly multicultural and multilingual society, what type of actions are needed to maintain and strengthen one’s home language and literacy from the perspective of kindergartens, libraries, and multicultural families and communities? We will share the results from the Finnish Reading Center’s Multilingual Literacy Project, followed by a presentation of Goethe-Institut Finnland’s DRIN project.

Join us in a reading session of a collection of stories celebrating the topics of DRIN for 4-6 year olds by artist and reader-mediator, Kemê. The reading will be in English.

In autumn 2022, DRIN organised an international online workshop ​for emerging BIPOC writers and illustrators. Participants were paired up to work on creating illustrated children’s stories about celebrations together, and the results of this collaborative process will be displayed in the new DRIN publication, and shared in a panel discussion.

A workshop in the city library of Varissuo in Turku, organised by the Goethe-Institut together with the "Children's library project" of Åbo Akademi and the Finnish Reading Centre.

The journalist Fridtjof Küchemann (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), the illustrator El Boum (Jasmina El Bouamraoui), the author and diversity trainer Chantal-Fleur Sandjon and the Finnish comic artist, teacher and activist Warda Ahmed discussed diversity within children’s literature.

A webinar that aims to share insights into the field of children’s literature: how to get access into the publishing world, how to find colleagues/ partners who are interested in the same topics to work on together? - Participation via open call-application only.

A webinar on children's literature, diversity and representation with perspectives from Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden.

How can alternative, under-represented narratives, voices and images be introduced? Different illustrators examine the topic from their own perspectives and report about the situation in Finland. They also  introduce the topic by providing examples of illustration and by an image analysis.

Welcome to the DRIN book club to discuss diverse children’s literature! In each meeting there will be 2-3 book introductions followed by discussion and exchange of thoughts and ideas. Everyone is welcome to the book club: parents, teachers, kindergarten teachers, librarians as well as everyone else working with or using children’s books.

What kind of books do we need so that all children feel included in the stories? We invite all new and existing children’s authors, illustrators and publishers as well as everyone working with children’s literature to attend our webinar.

A webinar in the context of the DRIN-project by the Goethe-Institut Sri Lanka, in collaboration with the Sri Lankan Ministry of Education, the SLBbY, Read Plus Foundation, Room to Read and the National Institute of Library and Information Sciences (NILIS), University of Colombo.

Everybody has a right to discover literature and to create stories, irrespective of their socio-economic or cultural background, gender, sexual preference or mental and physical abilities. Yet not all of us have an equal opportunity to do so.
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That is something the Europe-wide project Every Story Matters – making books more inclusive aims to change. The project wants to encourage the creation of more inclusive books for children and young adults, and to give book professionals (including publishers, librarians and editors) the tools and the strategies needed to become more inclusive and make diversity mainstream. 

Two five-day workshops for children's book illustrators and authors, facilitated by Baba Aminu Abdulkareem and Ute Krause, took place in Nigeria in March 2019 and March 2020. The workshops' aim was: to develop affordable children's books for the Nigerian market, which tell imaginative, yet realistic, stories that reflect the country's social and cultural environment.

The German Academy for Childrens' and Youth Literature has composed a list of books to offer impulses towards an integrative (reading) culture. The list collects a representative selection of books about children/ people of color.

With the online magazine “Zeitgeister”, the Goethe-Institut provides a platform for global discourse on colonial power relations, their consequences and how to overcome them. In interviews, essays and a range of other formats, the magazine highlights issues such as decolonisation, preservation of indigenous cultures, the role of museums, restitution and dealing with cultural heritage.
 

#StopHatredNow is an intercultural and anti-racist platform that strives to create discourse and offers tools to create a more inclusive, diverse and feminist art field. This list collects material that deals with diversity, racism and (post-)colonialism.

EL BOUM, Jasmina El Bouamraoui, is a German-Moroccan illustrator from Berlin. Their hand-drawn work has a fresh feel and invites the viewer to question clichés of all kinds.

The comic-artist, teacher and illustrator Warda Ahmed lives and works in the Helsinki metropolitan area. As an anti-racist feminist, she takes part in the public discourse on structures that make our societies more unequal. At the moment, she works in the project “Comics and migration” that is funded by Kone Foundation. In her comics, Ahmed deals with the migration history of her family. With the working group Sisaret 1918 (Sisters 1918) she won the Finlandia prize for comics in 2019.  

Chantal-Fleur Sandjon is a communication scientist, writer and editor. She has been working as a spoken-word artist, artistically accompanying post-colonial city walks, designing diversity workshops and working as an education officer at the Berlin Queer Education Unit.