Stalham High School

Stalham High invited the Sainsbury Centre team to work with their Year 10 pupils in collaboration with the school's end of year Literary Festival. The theme that developed was to do with personal responses to past lives as represented by headstones in the nearby churchyard.   This enabled pupils to make meaningful connections not only to individuals, but also to a general sense of ancestry.As usual the project was initiated from work with artefacts taken from the Sainsbury Centre's teaching collection. This prompted discussions about history and heritage, which led to a visit to the nearby church and churchyard to 'meet the ancestors.'  The culmination was the creation of poetic responses tied to balloons, which floated above the gravestones to create an uplifting response.  The pupils were also spoken to by a local historian about how to read their history and ancestory from the headstones in connection with the wider history of the village