Understanding Now: Exploring History through the Cultural Arts
Creative Elements was commissioned in 2008 to design and produce a multidisciplinary cultural arts programme and public event. The programme engaged over 1,200 participants and featured on TeachersTV as a pioneering example of fostering community cohesion and awareness about race in advance of the government's initiative launched later in the year.
The Cultural Consultant on the project was Trevor Blackwood at Nomad Creative Consultancy. Global learning, African Caribbean culture and history were placed at the centre of the 3-month project with 3 schools in Southwark, London accumulating in a Cultural Arts Festival. As a result of Blackwood’s consultancy, the project had two clear objectives targeting teachers, students and families:
To raise historical awareness of carnival and its link to enslavement
To reveal the rich cultural heritage and artistic legacy of carnival in the UK and Africa
The interdisciplinary project fostered greater community cohesion. All students had an opportunity to engage and discuss the untold stories and history of carnival through dynamic encounters with artists and partner schools. Through dialogue and creative experimentation, students worked together to design and construct costumes that reflected their collective values connected to the elements.
This pioneering Community Cohesion Project is even more relevant today (2020) than in 2008. The programme fostered cultural diversity through creative arts and critical thinking, enabling participants to engage in formal and informal encounters around the complex issues of race and history.
Today, this project would give young people, teachers and the wider community a clear context for the Black Lives Matter movement that is currently sweeping across the UK and globally, by looking back at history we can understand the present.
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