Gainford pupils step into past for 160th birthday

PUPILS from Gainford Primary School have enjoyed a “heritage fortnight” where they learned more about their school and village in the run up to a special anniversary.
The school turns 160 this year and will be celebrating with an exhibition and party in April. Headteacher Howard Blindt said recent activities had included going on guided tours around the village and making drawings to understand the school’s part in the community. Some of what the children learned was much like Horrible Histories, the popular book and TV series.
Ten-year-old Isabel said: “I liked the bit where there was this lady called Lizzie. She used rat poison and poisoned someone. She was hanged.”
Eight-year-old Orla said they had learned about how the school had changed over the years and how, in the past, it did not have electricity and girls and boys would be taught separately.
Some of the pupils have come up with original ideas that are going to form part of the exhibition.
Nine-year-old Jude earned the headteacher’s praise by coming up with an idea that will graphically illustrate how the school has changed.
He said: “I used to like a photo of Gainford School from a long time ago. It was taken from the church tower. I thought I could take a photo of how it looks now.”
Under guidance, Jude will be taken up the tower to take a new photograph from the same angle as the original.
Over the past few months, pupils have been also been working with local artists, including Patrick Langdon who has been teaching them about perspective and portraiture.
Mickleton textile artist Sara Cox was then commissioned to create a three-panelled artwork – known as a triptych – to celebrate the birthday.
She worked with the children to teach them how to make felt, which was used in the textile collage. The artist then took inspiration for the artwork, which shows an iconic angle of the school, from the children’s drawings of the school and was amazed at the detail they noticed.
She said: “The children saw the same things I saw.”
Nine-year-old Theo, who worked with the artist, said: “It was fun making the felt because you had to be very careful with it. We had to draw pictures of our faces on a piece of silk.”
The self-portraits came about through the artist’s talks with the headteacher and people in the school, where she learned that the general feeling was that the school was more about the people than the building itself. She incorporated that by having the children produce self-portraits on different coloured silk which were used almost as building stones for the school image in the artwork.
Ms Cox discussed precious gemstone colours with the children, and these colours were used for the silk containing the self-portraits to reflect how precious the children are.
She said: “There is lots of hidden meaning in it.”
Mr Blindt added: “It is very subtle. I think it is beautiful. It looks like stained glass.”
The activities were made possible through a £2,000 contribution from the neighbourhood budgets of county councillors for Gainford, George Richardson and James Rowlandson.
All of the children’s artwork, as well as photographs from the school and the village’s past, will form part of an exhibition  at the school on the evening of Thursday, April 27, followed the next day by a lunchtime birthday celebration. One March 23, the school will celebrate during a special birthday service at St Mary's church, in Gainford.