Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Kids' Guernica at Kanaike Elementary School in Japan

 
The sixth graders of Kanaike elementary school had a year of “Sending a Message of Peace” in 2013. The first semester, they visited Nagasaki as a school excursion and this experience motivated them to discuss how they could send a message of peace in their school life as the leading grade of the school.
They realized the importance to accept other friends’ ideas in their daily school life and organized a committee to create a Kids’ Guernica peace painting. Finally, they exhibited it in front of their school gymnasium for the memory of their graduation.
They collected each idea of peace painting among them and discussed how they could express their wish for peace in a painting again and again. Then, they decided to make a painting to show the birth of peace through connecting their hearts and resonating them. A phoenix was composed as a symbol of peace flying from their school with a paper folding crane to connect all living things. They decided who colored which part of the painting by themselves and worked together to complete it. 
The painting was displayed as a stage curtain on the day of their graduation ceremony. Their families and many participants from their community really appreciated it with a big applause.
The sixth graders’ hearts became one through all the process of this Kids’ Guernica project from the planning to the finishing by themselves and they could send a message of peace to many people.