Blood Bricks: Untold stories of Modern Slavery and Climate Change from Cambodia examines debt-bonded labour in Cambodia’s brick kilns. The project, part-funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), received international media coverage and high-level policy engagement in-country.

Cambodia is in the midst of a construction boom. Building projects demand bricks in large quantities, and there is a profitable domestic brick industry supplying them. This industry relies upon a multigenerational workforce of adults and children trapped in debt bondage. Tens of thousands of debt-bonded families in Cambodia extract, mould, and fire clay in hazardous conditions to meet Phnom Penh’s insatiable appetite for bricks.

The report and exhibition raise the question, who is the city built for? And whose lives are being sacrificed in the long shadows of its peaks and penthouses?