Eithne Nightingale

Background

About Eithne Nightingale

I have over 40 years experience of working on equality and diversity issues in the education and cultural sectors. This included teaching English as a Second Language to newly arrived children in Haringey, north London in the 1970s as well as working as Education Officer at Camden Committee for Community Relations - the race relations unit in Camden. In the 1980s I worked as Director of Tower Hamlets Training Forum, setting up a language and training workshop for local Bengali clothing workers including home workers. I went on to work in community education at Morley College and then in Hackney before moving to the V&A where I became Head of Equality and Diversity. As part of this I established the World in the East End Gallery at the V&A Museum of Childhood which was the inspiration for a collaborative PhD between the V&A and Queen Mary University of London 2011 - 2019 on researching the experiences of children (under 18) who migrated to East London (Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Newham) any time between 1930 and the present day. I received a grant from QMUL's Centre for Public Engagement to develop a website and films based on the personal testimonies of child migrants, some of whom are now artists, musicians and film makers as well as interviewing child migrants beyond East London and as far at the Isle of Bute in Scotland. One of the films was shortlisted for the BAFTA/AHRC Research Film of the year 2027. See The book based on this research Child Migrant Voices in Modern Britain - Oral Histories 1930s to the Present Day is available from Bloomsbury from February 2024. I now focus my work as a researcher, writer (non-fiction, travel and memoir) and filmmaker.