Cambridge Faith Partnership Workshop on 20th June 2018
A NEW INTERFAITH PARTNERSHIP GROUP
Helen Weinstein spoke at the inaugural meeting of this especially convened interfaith group in Cambridge, which is open to all, a new Cambridge Faith Partnership facilitated by Ariadne Henry, as part of her role as Community Development Officer for Inclusion and Engagement at Cambridge City Council.
HELEN WEINSTEIN AS SPEAKER AT INAUGURAL
In the first meeting, Helen was asked to share her experience and the challenges of leading on Holocaust Memorial Day Education and other Public Art programmes delivered by Helen and her team at Historyworks in the primary and secondary schools in Cambridge.
FUTURE MEETINGS
Further FAITHS partnership meetings organized will have experts share information about support for the homeless, host Holocaust talks, and to convene a meeting to discuss climate change and activism in Cambridge.
PRESENTATION BY HELEN WEINSTEIN
In her presentation to the FAITHS group, Helen introduced the theme for the next year for Holocaust Memorial Day, which is ‘Torn from Home’ =
https://www.hmd.org.uk/what-is-holocaust-memorial-day/
Helen underlined how important it is to bring speakers and historians to offer schools new experiences and experts, but to also use the national resources, which provide not only introductions to the Holocaust and the other 5 recognized genocides to share with teachers, but also super useful school assemblies which have the information tailored for each age group. For example, Helen is using the HMDT school assembly kit which you can find here:
https://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/hmd-assembly-primary-schools/
HOW TO HAVE SCHOOLS TRUST YOU AND ALLOW YOU TO TAKE UP TIME WITHIN THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM
Helen at Historyworks advises that we need to be very aware that some of the schools in Cambridge are stressed, and that the offer needs to support the Head and the Teachers and the Students in their goals. It is for this reason that conversations are important, and all of the school projects offered by Historyworks are designed to enrich the curriculum, say for PSHE and History and Geography, but also to deliver key LITERACY skills, by having the young people think about safety and security and what it must have been like to have your dignity and safety taken away, with your ethnic group persecuted and killed, with youngsters writing about what they have learnt with persuasive writing, pieces of newspaper reporting, and then using creative writing – when Historyworks brings in poets and composers and singing teachers into the schools t follow up from the history classes – because working with poetry and song and raps encourages the young people to respond emotionally to what they have learnt. It is important for the teachers too to make the content relevant and enriching, and to ensure that there is a high quality of written work and performances that is inspired by the workshops and class room lessons offered, means that the teachers are satisfied that the students have used the time well to learn about the Holocaust but we can spend several weeks on the theme if Historworks can embed it as the content for Literacy.
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION RESOURCES
In the discussion afterwards we had some good online resources suggested for RE which would help fit teaching the Holocaust not only with History and Literature, Geography and Music. These include BBC Bitesize for KS2 and KS3, also CBeebies which offers stories and explanations about a variety of faiths. Many resources are listed here:
