Local4Global

Ripple Effects of Funding

Some years ago GEMK identified the possibility of doing some work
around the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. Our local
link is through John Newton, writer of Amazing Grace, who was curate at
Olney for 16 years following a career in the slave trade. He went on to
become part of the abolition movement, dying in 1807 a few months after
the legislation was passed. Working with the Olney-Newton (town in
Sierra Leone named after John Newton) Link several unsuccessful
applications were made to the DFID mini grants. Eventually funding was
received from the Heritage Lottery Fund to enable us to look backwards,
although the matched funding we were hoping for from a DFID major grant
to look at current slavery and unfair trade practices was not
forthcoming. One of the activities for the HLF project was working with
a local school to use drama. There was a budget of £1,000 for this. In
consultation with Stantonbury Campus - the largest school in the
country - which houses GEMK, it was agreed that the money would be used
to put on two performances of Slave Story for the whole of Year 9. This
play was written and directed by a local Ghanaian. This would then be
used to stimulate work in the curriculum.

OUTCOMES

Additional work grew out of this. During an off-curriculum day some
60 pupils from Year 10 worked with music, dance and/or drama to produce
three end-of-day performances. In the Summer Term 2007 all the Year 7s
worked on the slavery theme in music, dance and drama. A group of
students from each tutor group then had a day to weld their own group's
work into a complete performance in the theatre that evening. It is
likely that some of the groups of Year 7 will go into Junior Schools
with their performance to stimulate work there too. The Performing Arts
team is expecting to use the same framework in the next few years, and
it is possible that the English and Integrated Humanities team will
provide some support by identifying people linked with the slave trade
as villains or heroes in their unit of work at the end of the Spring
Term each year. In Autumn Term 2007 the Year 13 A-Level students will
base their community theatre work around the slave trade. A key member
of the Milton Keynes Music Service (MKMS) became part of the slavery
discussions. We were able to raise some additional funds to enable
music to be commissioned for the Primary Music Festival. This traces
the movement of music from Africa to the US and back to the UK current
music scene. Part of this will be performed at the Schools Prom in
November. We have also been able to understand Scripture Union's Life
Path event for Year 5 children from the local area. Two days were held
in Olney with a wide variety of activities for the children to be
involved in, based around the life of John Newton and the life and
history of Olney.

Rosemary Clarke, GEMK, May 2007

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