August at the War Childhood Museum

This August, the War Childhood Museum continued its work through educational and institutional visits, international research and documentation, peacebuilding initiatives, and public engagement. Throughout the month, we also highlighted stories from our collection connected to important dates and launched a new monthly series bringing audiences closer to individual objects and the personal experiences they preserve.

Read more about our activities this month:

Educational Programs and Visits

Throughout August, we welcomed educational groups and visitors from different cities across Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as from Italy, countries across the Western Balkans, Greece, the United States, and Ukraine.

The Museum also welcomed Volodymyr Bachynsky, Ambassador of Ukraine to Bosnia and Herzegovina, who met with WCM founder and Director General Jasminko Halilović. During the visit, they discussed the Museum’s work in Ukraine, where WCM has been active since 2018 and has built a collection of more than 1,000 testimonies from children and young people documenting their experiences before and after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Research and Documentation

In August, we shared more about the War Childhood Museum’s ongoing research and documentation work in Colombia, launched earlier this summer as part of our efforts to document and preserve experiences of childhood shaped by armed conflict around the world.

The research is being conducted by Louis Monroy, WCM Research Collaborator, a university lecturer in Colombia whose work focuses on international relations, peacebuilding, and transitional justice.

Through the project, WCM is collecting personal stories and objects that shed light on childhood experiences from 1948 to the present day, spanning different periods of Colombia’s decades-long armed conflict. The project expands the Museum’s international collection and contributes to preserving diverse experiences of war-affected childhood across different historical and geographical contexts.

Peacebuilding and Education

In August, we looked back at “Creativity for Peace,” a two-year program through which teachers and students across Bosnia and Herzegovina used creative approaches to promote peace in their schools and communities. We shared moments from the program’s closing event and reflected on the experiences and connections built along the way.

We also spoke with Vernesa Manov, a teacher from Donji Vakuf who, together with her students, expanded the program activities—from creating a school museum to organizing humanitarian initiatives in their community.

International Projects

In August, the two-year texTALES project, co-funded by the European Union through the Creative Europe Programme, came to a close. Bringing together partners and participants in Italy, France, and Greece, the project explored how fashion, textile design, and participatory storytelling can challenge stereotypes about migration and create space for dialogue and inclusion.

The collaboration culminated in Handle With Care, a travelling exhibition and fashion collection shaped by participants’ personal experiences of migration, belonging, displacement, and home. Take a look at the final video retracing the two-year journey of texTALES, from storytelling and creative work in social tailoring workshops to the collaborative process and exhibitions across Europe.

Stories From Our Collection

In August, we launched Monthly Story Spotlight, a new series highlighting one object and the personal story behind it from the War Childhood Museum collection each month.

For the first edition of the series, we shared Lilian’s story from Gaza. Before leaving her home, she visited the sea one last time with her friends and collected seashells—a small object preserving the memory of a place and a moment before displacement.

The series will continue to introduce audiences to individual stories from the Museum’s collection, which includes more than 7,000 stories and objects documenting childhood experiences from 22 armed conflicts around the world.

Marking Important Dates

On World Humanitarian Day, August 19, we highlighted stories from the War Childhood Museum collection that illustrate the role humanitarian assistance can play during war and the ways children experience and remember receiving it.

We also marked 34 years since the burning of Sarajevo City Hall, which was set ablaze on the night of August 25–26, 1992, when it housed the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Around two million books and other library materials were lost in the fire.

Among the objects preserved in the War Childhood Museum’s collection is a book that survived that night, rescued from the burning library by our contributor Alma. We revisited Alma’s story and the story of the book she saved, which decades later became part of the Museum’s collection.

Media Mentions

The War Childhood Museum continued to receive attention in international media throughout August. Below is a selection of coverage from the past month: