From vision to reality

After Estes shared his idea, momentum for the project grew quickly in Galor’s classroom. For eight months, Galor, Estes and other students in the class — who represent a variety of backgrounds and faiths — worked together to request and collect drawings. 

“It was an amazing process to guide and collaborate with this group of students,” Galor said. 

Taher Vahanvaty, a junior concentrating in economics, drew on his fluency in Arabic and the connections he formed while living in Jordan during high school to focus on outreach to Palestinians.

“I knew that I was asking people to be vulnerable,” Vahanvaty said. “While I was reaching out to different groups, specifically in the West Bank, I’d say, ‘I know this is a tough ask, but I really believe in this.’” 

Galor and the students collaborated with research partners in the Middle East, including project co-director Amani Moussa, a Palestinian art therapist who teaches at Tel-Hai College in Israel. Galor reached out to Moussa after she read some of her published writing.  

“She, like me, is involved in a lot of cross-cultural dialogues and initiatives, and when I told her about the project, she started to tear up,” Galor said. “Academically, we felt we were very complementary, but also in terms of our desire to focus on shared humanity.” 

Supported by teachers and artists with whom they were familiar, the participating children, who ranged in age from 5 to 14, were asked to respond to the prompt: “Draw anything — especially depictions of family, home and experiences from the past year.” 

Using smartphones and other electronic means, the adult facilitators helped the kids submit digital copies of the drawings, while the originals remained with the children who created them. The project team worked within a rigorous ethical framework shaped by research standards and community sensitives, Galor said. All participation was optional, and kids were not directly asked to draw about conflict, even though many chose to do so.  

The submitted images range widely, depicting everything from violent images of missiles above tent cities and dead or injured bodies, to happy scenes featuring family, flowers and ice cream cones. 

“As researchers who have been in direct contact with these communities, we are very careful to avoid interpreting the drawings,” Galor said. “They exist as a shared archive of vision and witness to the psychological and humanitarian impacts of a conflict that continues to shape young lives across deeply unequal circumstances.” 

The scholarly engagement around “Innocent Knowledge” reaches beyond the exhibition: The research team also conducted interviews with the adult facilitators. Along with the drawings, their testimonials will be available for scholars to study. 

Sharing the work with the public 

When Rabbi Berman learned about “Innocent Knowledge” from Galor, with whom she had studied while she was a student at Brown, she immediately felt that it would be a good fit for the synagogue’s exhibition space. As the synagogue’s director of Jewish culture and programming, she is tasked with “bringing art into the daily life of our community,” Berman said.

A selection of drawings from the project went on view at the synagogue on Aug. 29. The children’s perspectives, depicted through their art, are what make the exhibition so powerful, Berman said. 

 “These are children’s own stories — not run though interpretation or translation, not told to us by a parent, a teacher, a politician, a diplomat — told through the artwork they create,” said Berman, who studied art and archaeology at Brown. “They offer quiet glimpses into how children observe, imagine and endure.” 

While the exhibition’s public viewing hours at the synagogue are currently limited, private viewings can be arranged through Oct. 8 for those who contact Berman directly, she said.

The “Innocent Knowledge” organizers look forward to sharing their work with viewers at Brown this winter. 

“I’m very proud of this project,” Vahanvaty said. “We are really excited to see our vision come to fruition and show our friends and family at Brown what we have been working on over the past year.” 

Estes said he vividly remembers how he felt last fall when he viewed the first batch of drawings. He stood side-by-side with his classmates gazing at the artwork created by children in a tent in central Gaza. 

“We saw unbelievable depictions of what these kids see and feel around them,” Estes said. “I just knew that we had something that needed to be shared.”