This article is from page 115 of the 2008-09-30 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 115 JPG
ENNISTY MON students celebrated Sunday’s International Day of Peace in artistic manner.
The first years of the local Voca- tional School, under direction of art teacher Bairbre Geraghty, undertook an international project, Pinwheels for Peace, by ‘planting’ pinwheels with messages of peace on school grounds. They were underscoring a statement that peace needs to be- come more than just a word.
‘Pinwheels for Peace’ was begun by art teachers in 2005 as an art instal- lation project and a way for students to express their feeling about what’s going on in the world and in their
Taste
In its first year, groups in about 1,300 locations were spinning pin- wheels on September 21, amounting to a grand total of about 500,000 objects around the globe. Last year, the number came to over 1.2 million in 2,500 locations, including Ireland, across Europe, the United States, Asia, Australia, Canada, the Middle East, Africa and South America.
Says Bairbre Geraghty, “The word is spreading; we’d love to see more schools and groups join with us next year.”
The first year students in Ennisty- mon created windmills displaying their images and words of peace and tolerance as part of the creation
process, writing their thoughts about ‘war and peace/tolerance/living in harmony with others’ on one side. On the reverse they made collages to express their feelings.
“The project is non-political – peace does not necessarily have to be asso- ciated with the conflict of war; it can be related to violence/intolerance in our daily lives, to peace of mind,” explains Bairbre.
‘To each of us, peace can take on a different meaning but, in the end, it all comes down to a simple defi- nition: ‘A state of calm and serenity, with no anxiety, the absence of vio- lence, freedom from conflict or disa- ereement among people or groups of people.,” she said.