Primary school children have been busy creating anti-apartheid drawings for a mural at a heritage centre due to open in 2023.
The Year 3 pupils, aged seven and eight, at Moreland primary school showed off their designs at a workshop with the Liliesleaf Trust UK, an education charity, on 20 October.
The Trust plans to open a new cultural heritage centre on Penton Street in 2023. It will be based in the derelict former headquarters of the African National Congress, the anti-apartheid party led by Mandela.
The drawings of Nelson Mandela, the South African flag and symbolic flowers, were inspired by the historic campaign against apartheid.
Hannah Watson, the year 3 teacher who ran the workshop, said: “The children absolutely loved it. Caroline Kamana [Project Director for the Liliesleaf Trust UK, the charity developing the heritage centre] and Councillor Valerie Boseman came and spoke about apartheid and we learned about the different flowers from South Africa and why they are important.
“This term the children learned about Nelson Mandela and why he’s important. They find it really interesting and they are capable of understanding what apartheid was. They’re very empathetic.”
“The workshop with Moreland Primary was fabulous. They were an incredible bunch and a really responsive group of children.
She said she was “quite astounded” at the amount of background knowledge the children had. “They’ve been doing an in-depth study of Nelson Mandela and related topics across the curriculum.
“Nelson Mandela said ‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world’. There is such importance in representational history being delivered to our young people which can continue to motivate people to become change-makers themselves.”
“[The Liliesleaf trust] aims, through educational methods, to engage people with the heritage of the struggle against apartheid but really set it within what it means for society today and how we can learn from it.
Next March will mark 30 years since the site was bombed by agents working for the South African government. The ANC continued to operate in the building until 1994, when Mandela was democratically elected as South Africa’s President.
