Outreach with Tenbury Primary School

by Barbara Mark

The Pity of War project went to visit Tenbury C of E Primary School in Worcestershire. The welcome was very warm and the children engaged and interested about the stories.

We discussed the words ‘Pity’ and ‘War’. The children spoke about their knowledge of war and their recent visit to a museum where they had tried on gas masks and went into bomb shelters.

Personal stories from different wars had been collected and were read out.

Drawing a design :  After a short talk the children started to design, on paper, what they would like to show on their stones. They were asked to keep the designs very simple.

Painting their designs :  The children were asked to colour in their designs on the paper if they were content with them. They were asked to keep their designs quite small so they thought about how their painting would fit on the stone.

Checking their art work :  After the design work the children came up to choose a stone that they felt would suit their painting.

Painting the stone :   Then came the difficult work of painting the design onto the stones. This took time and patience. Only two children needed to have another stone because their art work had not worked on the stone.

The finished stones :  As the children finished their stones they put them to dry together. They were all lovely and colourful and very different even if some of their ideas had been the same.

Photo 6.  The scream:  It was difficult to choose just two stones for the pity of war project. The open mouth and tears was a reminder of the poetry and art work from times of war.

Photo  8  The boat people:  The painting of lots of people in a boat resonated with all those escaping  war zones in the fighting around the world today. We have seen the drowned on media and social media as the boats sank because they were overcrowded.

All the other stones will be put under a WW1 commemorative bench in Tenbury Town Centre. The whole school will be painting stones to go under this bench.

With Many thanks to Barbara Mark

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