What's On
Holocaust Memorial Day
26th January 2024
9.30am – 2.00pm
Freedom To Tell Our Story
‘Fragility of Freedom ‘is a unique and powerful art installation designed to promote the message that freedom is important for everyone - and how this freedom can be taken away at any point.
This year, the special schools in Tameside along with The Lakes Care Centre Dukinfield with support from Tameside. Cultural service part of Tameside Council have initiated a project to commemorate the Holocaust (1933 to 1945) when millions were killed because of their perceived racial or biological differences. The installation is to be unveiled the day before Holocaust Memorial Day, 26th of January 2024 at Thomas Ashton School to mark this special commemoration.
Through their work on the installation, the children will have seen how, even in times when so many were forced to live under Nazi occupation, there were still good people prepared to risk everything to help those in need, and still people fighting for their freedom.
The Special Educational Needs Arts hub (SEN) has created numerous pieces over the years to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day and I hope that this art piece will make all the pupils proud of their achievements in commemorating this very sad but poignant event.
The Arts Hub came together and decided to develop Zines ( mini booklets) across the special schools. Each School was given a number of zines of a particular colour, one for each child involved.
Each school embraced a different approach to the project, they each considered the atrocities of the Holocaust and established a creative response, and another looked at what it is like to be free.
The zines themselves tell a story. We discussed that freedom can mean different things to different people. What is clear is that in every genocide that has taken place, those who are targeted for persecution have had their freedom restricted, and in some cases completely removed before many of them were murdered.
Our Tameside, Special Educational Needs. Arts hub also worked with a wonderful Storyteller and creator Adam Blake. Each school had the opportunity for Adam to work with their pupils in creating a story/fairy-tale linked to the importance of freedom. This created a basis for the creation of the zines.
Each child involved also took part in an Arts Award Discovery, which is a nationally recognised qualification run by Trinity College in London.
The zines created by all pupils across the special schools in Tameside will be displayed by means of an art installation.
This installation has been created by the pupils at Thomas Ashton School with Elizabeth II Group taking a lead. They have created a large pair of hands shackled, to signify fragility of freedom. However, from the centre of these hands is a large tree emerging brightly. We discussed how sometimes plants grow in extraordinary circumstances, sometimes emerging from a crack in the concrete, we then found a quote ‘life will find a way’ this gave us the idea of the tree emerging from the shackled hands. Zines will take the place of leaves hanging from the tree.
Each school has a particular colour so that they can be easily identifiable when visiting the installation.
The artwork/art installation will be unveiled on Friday 26th of January at Thomas Ashton School (the day before Holocaust Memorial Day), so that friends and family will be able to view the installation, it will then tour each of the participating schools, remaining at each for a week at a time for the following six weeks.
The installation will then return to Thomas Ashton School as its permanent home.
Using the history of the holocaust and other atrocities the project is designed to help pupils understand why qualities such as tolerance and acceptance of others are so important and as all and how such events in history should never be forgotten. If we held a minutes silence for every victim of the Holocaust, we would be silent for eleven and a half years.
The total number of pupils involved is around 450, a selection of pupils have worked alongside our Artist, Adam Blake, but all pupils have been involved in the journey and the artwork that accompanies this powerful art installation.
This event will be open for the pubic to view at Thomas Ashton School on 26th January 2024 9.30am – 2.00pm