Stanley Grove’s Wartime Home Front

Children from Stanley Grove Primary School in Longsight in Manchester have been working with a creative team from Manchester Camerata to create a new work reflecting life on the home front during the conflicts of the twentieth century.

Manchester Camerata’s 2011/12 season theme is Portraits, and many of the Learning and Participation projects have been encouraging school children across the region to take a look at their communities from a new perspective – and create their own portrait.

The Stanley grove project took Manchester Camerata’s Portrait of War concert – which itself reflected music inspired by war – as a starting point to see how the World Wars of the twentieth century changed the lives of ordinary people, specifically in Manchester.

Pupils worked with a dramatist Paul Hine, composer Andy Smith and Camerata musician Flautist Amina Hussain to write their own music, lyrics, drama and story to create their own Portrait of War. The project allowed them to learn about conflict and the way it affected their own communities.

As part of their exploration of the subject, Stanley grove had an interactive session at school with a member of the Imperial War Museum learning team, looking at real objects from the time including shrapnel, uniforms and medals.

The children performed their mini-opera Portrait of War as a pre-concert performance on Saturday 10^th March, 6.30pm.