By: Beatrice “Bee” Arthur
On 10 September 2026, Ukrainian photography, Ghanaian and Ukrainian painting, poetry and live music converged at La Villa Boutique Hotel in Accra, where artists and performers transformed creative expression into a powerful plea for children whose lives have been shattered by Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Organised by the Embassy of Ukraine in Ghana, the event also marked the 35th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, but its central focus was Bring Kids Back UA, an initiative launched in 2023 by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to support the return and reintegration of Ukrainian children unlawfully deported or forcibly transferred during the war.
Ukraine’s children are part of a much wider global crisis. According to UNICEF, nearly 50 million children worldwide had been displaced by conflict and violence by the end of 2024.
Numbers of that magnitude can be difficult to comprehend. Millions of children risk becoming figures on a page rather than individual human beings with names, families, homes, friendships, classrooms and memories. We can register the enormity of a figure and still remain emotionally detached from the individual lives contained within it. Art humanises those numbers.
A photograph can reveal the face behind a figure. A painting can communicate fear, loss or longing without a single word. A poem can give voice to absence. A song can carry grief across languages and borders. Film, literature, oral storytelling, fashion, performance and installation can similarly transform distant events into human experiences that audiences can see, hear and feel.
This is where cultural diplomacy through art becomes especially powerful. Art does not replace facts, policy or diplomacy; it gives them a human dimension. It creates awareness not only by informing audiences but also by making them connect emotionally with people whose experiences may otherwise seem remote.
Lost Childhood paintings and a photo exhibition demonstrated precisely that power.
Works by Ukrainian artist Natalia Lisenko were exhibited alongside vivid canvases by Ghanaian visual artist and musician Gedelieso Agorsor, while drawings by children from Ghana’s Ukrainian community gave the exhibition an intimate, unmistakably human dimension. Together, the works translated displacement, separation and interrupted childhood into a visual language capable of reaching audiences far beyond Ukraine.
The evening was guided by master of ceremonies Beatrice “Bee” Arthur, Ghanaian decolonial artivist, curator, cultural commentator and Head of the Fashion Domain of the Ghana Culture Forum. Arthur steered a programme in which visual art, literary art and music became vehicles for cultural diplomacy, keeping the human stories of displaced children at the centre of the evening.
One of the programme’s most poignant moments came when 12-year-old Elikay Diallo performed Where Are the Footsteps? , a poem reflecting on the absence of children from the familiar spaces of school, play and everyday life.
Music extended that narrative further. Agorsor performed original acoustic songs written in solidarity with Ukraine, while live performances by Boaz and Enoch Aldrich, the adopted sons of Canadian volunteer Denise Aldrich, added another emotional layer to the programme.
The Government of Ghana was represented by Hon. Linda Obenewaa Akweley Ocloo, Greater Accra Regional Minister. The event also received support from the Embassy of the Netherlands, the German Embassy, the Canadian High Commission, the Delegation of the European Union to Ghana and the UK High Commission, as well as Svitanok, a newly founded Ukrainian NGO in Ghana.
Their presence underscored the diplomatic significance of the initiative. Yet the evening also demonstrated that diplomacy does not happen only through embassies, official statements and formal negotiations.
It can happen through a photograph, a canvas, a poem, a song, a film, a garment, a performance or an installation.
A painting requires no translation. Neither does a photograph, a poem, a melody, or the image of a child separated from home.
In moments of conflict and humanitarian crisis, art does more than illustrate what has happened. It bears witness. It preserves memory. It creates awareness. Most importantly, it restores individuality to people who might otherwise disappear into numbers.
Through that shared cultural language, Lost Childhood sought not only to tell the stories of Ukraine’s missing and displaced children, but to place those stories within a much larger global reality and to remind audiences in Ghana that behind every statistic is a child whose story deserves to be seen, heard and remembered.
