We are gathered here this afternoon to commemorate World War I and all the faith school children
are participating in this event and it is very important for us to be passing on this
lessons to young children so they can learn about the past and also become better citizens
in the future. The purpose of having all these faith school children here they should
be learning about how they can coexist with each other and also to be understanding of
each other's faiths and cultures. My name is Alex Wallace and we are at Saint John
the Baptist Primary School which is on the edge of Clarendon Park in Leicester. So what
happened today was the guys from Century Stories came in and worked with the children
on a project based around peace and the Gospel of Saint John the Baptist and looking particularly
at one piece of literature that was distributed to servicemen in the trenches and because
the name ties in with the name of our school the children then went around wrapping a
tree in finger knitting and each child had a piece of wool and they worked on making
a length of finger knitting and we took that outside and they wrapped that around the tree
and then the children took a quick reflection and did a bit of reflecting on the actual
Gospel and the literature that was distributed to the soldiers. The school itself is a very
diverse school and actually watching all these children engage harmoniously in one activity
sort of encapsulates the message of the project in itself. I suppose what's important about
this project and what's significant is that Leicester is such a culturally diverse area
and the fact that it's been carried out in a number of different settings and with a
number of different faiths and that shows a great unity within the message and actually
shows similarities between faiths and instead of concentrating on differences we should
be looking at similarities and what we share is common goals or common belief structures.
It was fantastic to see the children engage in such a hands on activity, the weather was
beautiful so we managed to go outside, everybody got stuck in, they all gave it a go to varying
degrees of success but there wasn't a success criteria, there wasn't a right or a wrong
so all of the children engaged with doing it and you know big happy smiley faces, bright
eyes, what a lovely way to finish the week off so it was fantastic.
Okay well today's quite an exciting morning here at Falkens Primary, we're working on
our contribution to the Century of Stories project and so all of our children have been
thinking about what would it be like to have been actually part of the war so they've looked
at it from the point of view of either a soldier, a nurse or receiving a postcard from somebody
who's actually fighting in the war and Linda's an artist who's worked with us on a number
of projects and we're delighted that she's going to make this into an artistic outcome
so the children are going to actually put their postcards onto poppy petals with some
of the messages they've written, I have to admit when you listen to those postcards as
they read them out, you really do feel they were part of that war.
Dear mum and dad I hope you're feeling well and not worrying about me because I am alright,
the trenches are ever so many that they have all kinds of stuff like rats, cats, poo and
lice everywhere, I feel so ashamed that I've seen you in four years which is very sad.
Thank you mum and dad for their socks and chocolates and cakes for their soldiers, it
is hard being a nurse, I am missing you so much.
I am very upset because my best best friend has died, has just died.
I had bombs and bombs, how is the valley, I'm okay, don't need to worry.
Hope you are okay, your friends are really missing you too, what have you been doing
and how are you finding it?
There are so many banging noises going on outside which is very annoying and I am so
tired as I haven't slept for a whole week, I've been missing you lots, I miss all the
cuddles and hugs you used to give me, I hope to see you very soon, your love soon.
This is our heritage, this is what our forefathers contributed and the fact that in a sense the
Sikh contribution for many years has been hidden, I mean certainly when I was at school
I had no idea that our own background, our culture had such a contribution to make to
the war and I think the children have learnt that and we are delighted at the number of
children that have actually gone home and spoken about it and actually have come back
to school and said my great great grandfather played a part but I guess the important lesson
and what this century of stories is allowing us to do is looking forward we need to collaborate,
work together and the opportunity to work with Krishna Avanti, Madani, St John's means
that we are now, the future is about collaborating and working together and I think this project
has created so many opportunities to do that.
Hello there, I'm from Krishna Avanti, I'm in an after school club here and this project
is about World War One and when I found out about the project by a teacher I thought why
not use dance as a medium, I talked to kids before I started this project about World
War One and what do they think and they said yeah we want peace, we want harmony, we don't
want fights so we're going to send this message to adults, children's message and we're going
to use like different paths but it's a one message to everyone that we want peace, harmony
and this is the Shanti Mantra which is explained about we want everyone to be happy, live together
and basically help each other.
As you can see in the rehearsal children are really enjoying themselves to participate
in the dance and rehearsing for this project and by doing this I think they have learnt
about history as well, I think it's a fantastic opportunity and they're going to take this
further and I'm sure they're going to share this experience with other children as well.
So the dance starts off with dead people which we lie down and they wake up and tell the
people who are fighting let's stop the war because if we have war we die and there's
nothing to gain in it.
Well the dance is about peace so can you please stop the war and so we're just making a dance
about it because we don't want the fight to happen.
I've enjoyed this dance a lot.
This dance is about stopping war and nobody wants war, why do you want to be killed?
You want the world to be a good place and a happy place, just enjoy the time you're
here.
Crucial anti-fragment storm!
My name is Imchil Patel, I'm a Deputy Head at Modani Schools Federation, we were first
approached a few months ago to run this project with our students to look at our link to World
War One.
One of the greatest things about this project is it's given the opportunity for our students
to learn about their link to World War One, their link from a religious point of view
but also from their background and their family backgrounds but for the children it's also
going to be a great opportunity and myself to learn about how the different faiths are
connected to World War One, so what is the Hindu link to World War One, what is the Sikh
link to World War One, what is the Catholic link to World War One and also then we can
share our link to World War One.
We have been preparing our interfaith planning by showing what our background cultures have
contributed in the World War One and as some people know some of the countries are not
very well known throughout the UK.
I enjoyed it because there's not many, I haven't learnt any of this stuff before but just due
to this competition I've learnt a lot of stuff just to do the World War One.
Dear mother, when I receive my orders for another battle I always write you this letter,
it's the one letter I pray you will never receive, for if you receive this letter I
am dead.
Well what the girls have been, well what all of us have been doing really is kind of working
together to make a project that really shows our ethnicity and what we feel about this
topic and the war and effort.
Even if we are a different religion it really doesn't matter because we're all fighting
for the same reason.
So we're all kind of really working together because we're really passionate about this
topic.
We are all Muslims, during the war 400,000 soldiers helped fight but only 2% of people
know this.
We did learn really a lot of things and like we learnt that only 2% of people actually
know that Muslims actually took part in the war.
People don't think of it like that but a lot of people from like India took part because
they were actually part of the colonies at that time so they not just arrived, they actually
registered for it because people thought it was an honour to take part in this war to
fight for your home.
So a lot of people did take part but not a lot of people know these facts.
So yeah we had a lot of fun and we got to meet other classes and just try and socialise
a bit more and work together.
Thank you for the opportunity this project has given us, it's allowed us four schools
to work collaboratively on a project, to work together, to work collectively on something
to really show our connection.
