http://www.flickr.com/photos/8326279@N08/sets/72157604054534201/ The white is the stadium, the rings are the athelets, their colours are from their national flags. Taking the colours and symbols in OUR flags of origin and identity we created individual fusions. Representing race, nationality, religion, and personal interests.These will become the building blocks of our Olympic Pavilion – A 3d Archive of White City Stories researched from 1908. 

Dimitri Launder is now working at the schools creating sculptural objects that will house the White City Story Archives. The children are using the colours of the flags of the countries their families come from, and exploring concentric circles to form the objects. I found this online animation artwork commissioned by Tate to celebrate the Olympic Bid. It’s using Olympic colours to create a constantly growing and branching image of flowers bursting out into many concentric circles. http://www.tate.org.uk/40artists40days/daniel_brown.html

1. Roughly, what was the structure of your sessions?  Broadly speaking, I adopted the same structure for each of the 3 schools: [1] Introductory teambuilding games & summary of project’s themes through riddles & songs. Emphasis on entente cordiale/friendly agreement between nations and how this can be reflected in the culturally diverse make-up of the children in each school. [2] Fleshing out project’s historical context with information about chronology and content of White City exhibitions 1908-1914. Information presented in fun, storytelling format made vivid with imagined details & anecdotes about & descriptions/glossy colour photos of particular attractions or exhibits. (At SS, emphasis on children themselves distilling information from informational texts presented to them). [3] Book-making activity in which each child creates their own, 8-page book using a piece of A3 paper, 4 folds and a cut! Children then design their own front cover with title & illustration. [4] Children presented with a summary of 10 or so White City attractions/exhibits and invited to write about and illustrate their favourites in the first 2 pages of their books. In WM, the emphasis was on creating persuasive descriptions so that the reader would want to visit the White City and see the attractions for themselves. Each school invited to complete follow-up tasks to fill all 8 pages of the children’s books: 2 pages with first person Diary Entry from the point of view of a chosen historical character and (in WM) the final 2 pages with ideas for a White City 2008 Exhibition. [5] Recap of introductory games with additional game from one of the countries featured in the White City exhibitions 1908-1914. Day rounded off with traditional folktale slanted towards some of the project themes.  2. What worked and what didn’t in terms of the strategies you used to work with the children? What did they respond to? Was anything too difficult?  The children selected for this project in SS are a small (11) group of very bright, independent and articulate 10/11 year-olds. They found some of the teambuilding work quite challenging but were very inspired by the riddles and had a whole load of their own, which I was very happy to let them share with me! They responded well to intellectually challenging tasks and were also full of creative ideas of their own. The 19 extremely mixed ability 8/9 year-olds at WL needed far more guidance, clear instructions and very firm boundaries. One or two children in this group have particular (immediately evident) difficulties in working as part of a team, taking turns and conforming to classroom conventions like putting their hands up before responding to questions. I don’t believe that they should be encouraged to shout out! They responded very well to the multicultural aspect of my work with them – songs & games – but some of them found the book-making task – folding and cutting paper – quite challenging.  The group at WM consist of 28 8/9 year-old children selected from 2 classes. I though this was going to be the most difficult group because of its size, but the class teacher I worked with (Katie Brown) has extremely successful and subtle techniques for encouraging the children to focus. So this group was able to achieve quite a high standard of work. They loved all the drama-based activities and worked with great concentration and imaginative flair on the book-making task.   3. Were there any unexpected outcomes or specific concepts/creative outcomes that can be used and built on in subsequent sessions? What do they children want or need to happen next for the project to be successful? Children at SS can be given quite a lot of autonomy in making decisions about the kind of work they want to do. I think that WL & WM – partly because they’re younger and also very mixed ability – need far more guidance. On the other hand, all the children responded well on their own levels to the creative challenges they were presented with. And as long as there’s a clear and achievable goal for each session, I believe that all the children can gain a great deal from the final stage of the project.  4. What practical information is essential to pass on?  See Sara’s useful summary of start times, etc. The parish hall space I worked in at SS is great because there are no distractions and plenty of room to stretch out. Such a shame they’re going to knock it down soon! At both WL & WM, I worked in the classrooms (overheated and at WM right next to another class with no door between them) but also in the school halls for introductory fun and games. The teaching staff in all 3 schools are very supportive. Kevin Graal

29.02.08

Here are some lovely pictures, found on this website: www.deltatango.freeserve.co.uk/amusements.html

This is the place for Creative Partners and teachers to store their questions about the topic, White City (the exhibition site, the 1908 Olympics and the area circa 1908 and since). We do know the answers to most of these, but this is simply for storing questions.

- What was there before the exhibition?

- Does anything of the pavilions or landscaping remain?

- How were the structures made?

- What were the different exhibitions that showed there?

- How long was it used for exhibitions and when did it become the BBC site?

- Who designed and built it?

- What happened to it during the 1914-1918 war?

- Was it used for the 1910 Coronation?

- In the Franco-British exhibition, the first one, what did the French bring to it?

- What were the two ‘villages’ like in the first exhibition (the Irish village and the Senegalese village)?

- Where were the photos taken from? (How did they get up so high?) 

- How did people imagine it and talk about it, especially if they never visited it? How do we imagine now that it’s gone?

- What are the origins and meanings of words like oriental and pavilion and place names?

- What was happening in the rest of the world at the time? (What was the relationship between the French and British? What was happening to the British Empire? etc)

- What was Hammersmith (Shepherd’s Bush, White City etc) like at this time?

- Did local people visit the exhibitions?

- How far did people travel to come to the exhibitions?

- What were the three schools like around 1908?

We felt it is important that the Creative Partners are not seen as experts, teaching the children about history and culture, but that they show how they do research in their own creative work, inspire and guide the children to learn research skills, and help the children in turn to inspire others to do research. Questions are at the heart of this. We have looked at the learning models in Future Lab’s Enquiring Minds project, the British Library’s Learning programme and Philosophy for Children. We will use tactics like ‘Five Why’s’, asking children to ask five questions in turn rather than just one, for example. We could use the five Olympic rings as a device to help children record those five questions.

We felt it would be useful to keep our own question bank, a place to store all the questions we have. The children will also be keeping their own. The next post will be a Question Bank and we can keep adding questions to it.

In the planning meeting of Creative Partners we started by looking at the image of the symmetrical White City exhibition with its extraordinary pavilions. We discovered that there is a wonderful linking of themes and metaphors across this project. 

Concentric circles

-         Thinking about the starting point and limits of the exploration in this project, we drew circles starting at the circular bandstand of the White City exhibition, moving out to embrace the Olympics, the whole White City area, then Hammersmith and Fulham, then considering the people who visited the exhibition from across the country, then considering the way the rest of the world is shown in the exhibitions and symbolised in the Olympics.

-         We remembered that the BBC is now at White City, carrying on the role of broadcasting public information about the world. The symbol of broadcasting is sonic ripples.

-         We thought about the circular courtyard at the BBC, now on the White City site, and how courtyards are important places in public or shared buildings. We thought about the importance of courtyard living in other countries and cultures.

-         We remembered the five Olympic rings

-         The circular or concentric forms of the oriental towers

-         Concentric rings as a way of folding away and opening out a structure 

Symmetry and folding

-         Pavilion means butterfly

-         Relationships or joinings between two countries (e.g. Britain and France)

-         Japanese folding books

-         Concertinas as ways of folding away and opening out a structure

We want to enable the children to discover this symbolism for themselves, through their own questioning, but also by designing the activities to use those shapes and symbols.

Here are some practical details about the first workshop led by Sara Haq:

Monday 4th Feb, all day, St Stephens Primary

Tuesday 5th Feb, all day, Wendell Park Primary

Wednesday 6th Feb, all day, Wormholt Park Primary

Sara will use a range of strategies to get children asking questions and finding out about questions.

Sara is coming with an archive of images from the White City exhibition, the Olympics and London at the time.

Sara is bringing her laptop. She needs a power socket for it. 

Ideally she would like to connect to a projector/whiteboard, and needs a cable that goes to a laptop from projector

Ideally, she would like an internet access point for her laptop, or wifi

Ideally, she would like the children to be able to do some internet research at some point in the day

If possible, can the children take some photos – will there be two or three digital cameras? She can bring one small one. They will have other tasks to get on with so they don’t need to have lots.  

Access to photocopier and to be able to print out digital images.

Can there be a range of card/paper that can be cut to make index cards. Sara will also bring some purchased index cards.  

If there are any scrap fabrics in the school, that would be useful. Sara will also bring a bag of fabric.

Each child will have a manila envelope to keep their materials in at first. (They will make a foldaway concertina pouch using their ‘index cards’, working with Dimitri later in the project.)

The local walk will be in the second week. On this walk, at least 3 digital cameras will be needed. However, children will gather information by doing drawings, making rubbings, writing notes, collecting things as well as taking photos. We will confirm soon if this will be in the morning or afternoon. It will not range very far from the schools. The key aim will be to develop their observational and research skills, thinking about their area 100 years ago.

Good as my word, I have created a site for everyone involved in the White City Story Archives. This will help us share all the thoughts, documents, pictures and creative work from the project. It will also help us share the project with a wider community, including parents of the schools involved, residents of the White City area of London interested in its local history and people interested in enquiry-based learning.

White City Story Archives is a Creative Partnerships project with three primary schools in Hammersmith and Fulham:

St Stephens C of E Primary

Wormholt Park Primary

Wendell Park Primary

The Creative Partners are:

Sara Haq

Dimitri Launder

Kevin Graal

The project aims to inspire the schools to begin using enquiry-based methods across the curriculum, by developing crack teams of young creative researchers. These teams are using the history of the White City exhibition, built for the Olympics 100 years ago in 1908, as a stimulus to develop their skills as creative thinkers, questioners and communicators. It is a brief project but we hope to leave the schools with a toolkit and an amazing expandable story archive that will keep growing as more children follow the trail of their curiosity.