April 2015,
A wonderful peace painting was
created by children of "Miracle de Yahwé" primary school in Sanguera-Kleme village in Togo. The workshop was supported
by "Helene-Lange-School" in Mannheim, Germany. 20 girls and boys participated
in this project. They were eight to thirteen years old and selected by the
school teachers. Most of the children came from poor families and they had very
little experience of doing art activities such as painting.
After reflecting the meaning
of peace, each of them started drawing her/ his own image of peace on paper.
They created various images of peace such as flowers, animals and daily life events.
A boy drew the Earth Spirit of rich harvest since enough food for all is
essential for peaceful coexistence. As the next step, children lay down on the
big canvas and outlined their bodies each other. In this process of outlining
their bodies, they learned the importance of working together with care, respect and trust. After that, they filled the blank spaces between their body images on the big canvas with many images and symbols of
peace which each of them had created earlier. The completed peace painting was hung from the balcony gallery.
This project was coordinated by
Christa Kleinbub-Dunkl, a high school teacher ret.
Rainer-René Mueller, Museums-Dir.iR, art historian
* All photos and text are copyrighted. Re-use only after consultation and sources.
(c ) 2015 CKL & RRM
