On Thursday 28th March, Cinderloo1821 teamed up with Martin Phillips of Historic England to launch the project into the Heritage Schools programme by hosting a training day for eight teachers from Telford primary schools at the Oak Tree Centre, Lightmoor. Andrew Howe, artist, and Jean Atkin, poet, helped lead a packed schedule of enjoyable and informative activities.
Starting with a toilet roll timeline to put the Cinderloo Uprising in historical context, we then investigated the story of the events of 1821 in more detail identifying some of the many themes and links with the school curriculum including:
- landscape and geology
- industrial history
- community – working together, sharing, supporting and being involved
- power, protest and conflict
- crime and punishment
- social justice
- political history
- reporting and recording historical events
It was a gorgeous sunny day in Lightmoor, as Andrew led a 2 hour heritage walk up to Horsehay and back via Little Dawley and Doseley.
Participants were encouraged to reflect on their experiences of the landscape, connecting to the Cinderloo Uprising. Jean Atkin gathered thoughts and comments, and during the course of the afternoon edited together a fantastic poem based on everyone’s contributions. See the separate post for the finished poem.
After lunch, the group took part in role play activities investigating different parts of the Cinderloo events using a contemporary news reporting style.
After a formal debate considering whether the use of violence against the miners was justified, there was a further discussion of ideas for school project work and how Cinderloo1821 could support, before the day concluded with Martin reading the riot act.
A range of learning materials were prepared by Historic England and ourselves for the training event including maps and background information, and some of these will be made available for download from this website soon.
With funding from the National Lottery Fund Heritage and Historic England for supporting work in schools in 2019, Cinderloo1821 aims to work with as many schools as possible within the funding budget to raise awareness of the Cinderloo Uprising and explore some of the issues around it. The programme is open to all Telford schools, and the interest shown in bookings for this training day is a good indicator that there will be plenty of exciting project work to come in the near future. We will then be looking towards the bicentenary in 2021 to continue with schools work, perhaps involving a larger public event.
We will be working in partnership with Participate Contemporary Artspace CiC. Participate is a well established community interest company based in Shrewsbury, where it manages a gallery, artist studios and public events including exhibitions, educational activities and artist talks.
We can potentially bring in contributions from our other partners including the Ironbridge Gorge Museums Trust and the “Granville Boys”, ex-miners who have much experience in working in schools.
In addition, Participate is able to offer Arts Award assessors so that we may support schools who wish to offer Arts Award opportunities at Discover or Explore level to pupils, and contribute to Bronze level for Year 6. Arts Award is a nationally recognised qualification which you can read more about here: http://www.artsaward.org.uk.
With feedback like the comments below, we are delighted to make a great start with a positive impact:
“A fantastic day of information! And pushed me out of my comfort zone with role play and debate!”
“The pooling and sharing of ideas was very useful. Furthermore, the ideas shared by the leaders were very useful”
“Thank you for a brilliant today”
Cinderloo 1821 Remembered 