Installing the exhibition and long drive to Swansea

An early start at Penair School, Truro, where we install the exhibition. A new arrival is a very powerful Relic Box by Patrick Coleman. It's a 3D scrapbook in his late father's toolbox, a scrapbook of mementos and ephemera from his life. It is very powerful and at the same time very delicate - protected here by a perspex box created by Alex White, University College Falmouth.

Tanya Davies and Carmel Henry - the Citizenship team at Penair who have really thrown themselves behind the project. 

 And finally, a long drive north and west  - to Swansea, where am speaking at a seminar on migration tomorrow.

St Enoder, a meeting and a workshop at Richard Lander

Early for a meeting at Pentreath, a charity working on mental health issues. Take a walk around the graveyard at St Enoder and see snowdrops, clearly not deterred by the cold snap.
A good meeting with Tamsin and Magda at Pentreath - they are developing very active and engaged groups of BME women in the county. We wonder whether there are ways of linking up our work - it's not quite clear how  at the moment, but we agree to keep in touch. Very nice to see Magda, who featured in our film Short Stories from the Edge, a couple of years ago.
Then to Richard Lander School, Truro. A very inspiring quote in the carpark. "Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the world." Archimedes.

And the spirit of the sculpture continues inside the school.  Citizenship head Vicky Downing is passionate about her subject and has inspired her class of 26 very able year 9 students who are taking their GCSE Citizenship two years early. 

Ewa comes with me to the workshop, with her husband, Waldek. We are all  hugely impressed by these children who have volunteered to come into the workshop after school - and will come again in a couple of weeks when we return to follow up. They are lively, engaged and articulate. We talk about the experience of migration and the things people carry with them in their cases when they set out on significant journeys. We talk about the suitcases created with migrant workers in Cornwall. 
And Ewa has brought a bag with things that she brought to the UK when she first came here four years ago. In it are a selection of objects. A book of Polish history.  A piece of amber, given to her by her grandmother. A wedding present, and a CD.

The students write lists of things that they would take if they decided to leave - or had to leave - Cornwall to start a new life.  Lots say they would take family photos, mobile phones, iPods, jewellery, favourite books...
Vicky starts a discussion. 
Why do they think that sometimes there is hostility against migrant workers?
Answer: "Because some people think 'they are taking our jobs'".
Fair enough - but isn't it the fact that migrant workers are often doing jobs that local people don't want to do?
Answers: "Yes, but people want to do 'interesting' jobs." "We have so much spoonfed and given to us, we think everything should be." 
What do people think about the role of the press - in particular the tabloid press? It seems to help drum up racist attitudes.
Answers: "People might be hateful because they don't know them (migrant workers). It's our responsibility to find out about other people."

Am only sorry that I missed seeing my old friend Russell Pascoe who has taught music at the school for many years. Next time. We are due back in a couple of weeks to continue the discussion.

Cold snap - does the daffodil picking begin? And more planning

The Western Morning News runs its annual photo of a smiling migrant worker daffodil picker in west Cornwall. The picking has started at long last, after the cold snap, it says.
However later in the day, the local TV news has a farmer near Truro as saying that the picking is slow.  Hear from local farming contacts that the cold weather isn't a bad thing for the crop - it extends the selling period, which is a good thing for everyone.  The Western Morning News says that Cornwall produces a fifth of the world's daffodils.
Ewa and I for the second time in a week drink coffee in a Tesco's cafe, this time in Pool after a meeting at the school where our planned assembly was cancelled yesterday. The migrant worker members of staff are reflecting on how they feel the issues could be tackled in the school, where there are several children of migrant workers. The message of I Packed This Myself is the experience of migration - it's a challenging message to get across, particularly to an audience that isn't particularly receptive.
Buy my own local daffodils (from the Scillies) from a petrol station in Hayle. They are Soleil D'Or and - apparently - sailors approaching the islands could smell them long before land was sighted.

Paul Matosic and new show in Holland

Artist Paul Matosic, who is based in Nottingham, will be in Holland later this month doing a short residency and exhibition. Click here for details of the gallery.
Paul has loaned a suitcase to I Packed This Myself - which will next be on display when the show opens at Penair School, Truro.  It's a suitcase that his father took with him from Croatia up through Europe during the Second World War, using it as additional shelter in Dresden during the bombing. He carried it to England, where he eventually settled. He scratched the names of the places that he travelled through on the case.

Paul has made a short film, using old photographs and details of the journey, which we'll be showing at Penair.

Our first school assembly

Our first school assembly as we start to get things rolling. At Penair School, Truro, to launch the project in the school. Year 9 students will be working on related themes all term and - with other students - will be creating art work. Some, we hope, with migrant workers. The full I Packed This Myself exhibition will be on display there from 23 February 2010. And a formal launch party held on 23 March 2010. Watch this space for more details.

More than 1,000 children march into the gym with military precision. It is interesting that schools, like houses, have atmospheres. The atmosphere here is very positive, engaged and energetic. It's an impressive school. (I particularly like the way that they have photo albums in reception with pictures of different activities, Royal visits! and school trips.)
Ewa comes with me. She is originally from Gdansk, her father a Solidarity activist.  She has been in this country for four years, first working in a food processing factory in Dundee and then a medical supplies factory near Newquay. She tells the assembly about this work.
Later we sit in at a Citizenship class run by Carmel Henry, the driving force behind Penair's involvement with the project. Ewa is fascinated to learn that Cornwall has a long history of migration - that Cornish miners left the county to find work overseas. She says she'd like to go back to school.
Interesting to hear this - it's surprising. This is a major part of Cornish history and culture that Ewa didn't know about - and she's been here for four years.
Another indication, perhaps, of the way two communities - migrant worker and local communities - live side by side but don't necessarily interact socially and culturally.