Kavina is 11 years old. She goes to school in Mombasa, Kenya. When her teacher asked her to draw a picture on a postcard of something that was important to her, she chose to draw her mother, Anita.
On the back of the postcard she explained: “The most important person in my life is my mother. She means a lot to me. I am not only her daughter, but her best friend as well. She is ready to wipe every tear of mine. Whatever I am today it is because of my sweet, lovely, beautiful mother. When I grow up, I want to look after her as she has looked after me during my childhood. I wish everybody in the world gets a mother like mine.”
Kavina’s postcard, lovingly and carefully drawn, is one of about 10,000 sent between schools in the UK and Africa which make up The Bigger Picture, a display of spectacular printed cloths unveiled this week along the railings of the British Museum. The pieces of fabric, designed to resemble Ghanaian Kente cloths, are the result of a project started by Link Community Development that aims to create lasting links between schools in the UK and Africa. Its school-twinning programme, which includes the annual postcard exchange, helps to raise cultural awareness and understanding among children.
Schoolchildren decorate their own blank postcards and explain their choice of picture in a message on the back. “Some of them make you laugh, some of them make you want to cry,” Anna Calquhoun, the organisation’s UK programme director, says. “We have 12,000 children’s voices here and they have so much to say. This is an opportunity to make them heard.”
The idea for the Bigger Picture project came from Gus Casely-Hayford, programme director of Africa ‘05, a nine-month project to promote contemporary African art involving the British Museum, Arts Council, South Bank Centre, the BBC, and smaller galleries, theatres and community arts centres around the UK.
Advertisement
“My father was Ghanaian,” Casely-Hayford says, “but I was brought up in South London. I remember some aunts used to come and visit, usually around Christmas, and they would bring these bits of cloth with them. People in Ghana unravel the threads from bits of European or South-East Asian cloth and remake them on these tiny looms. Because the threads were so short, they could only make these tiny strips, which were then sewn together.”
The importance of the Kente cloth comes from the history that is woven into every item — each panel or strip of silk or cotton has a different story to tell. Kente cloths are used during story-telling, and powerful Ghanaian men wear them with pride. “I thought that it would be great if all the narratives of lots of children could be woven into one big significant statement, that whoever we are, wherever we are and whatever our background or culture, we are all connected by basic things,” Casely- Hayford says.
The cloths are a credit to his vision. Common preoccupations such as family, home and friends are evident among all the contributions from the UK and Africa. “The reason I chose my Mum and Dad is because they have given me, my sister and brother things that they didn’t get when they were young,” writes Glen Mohammed, a 12-year-old from Ghana.
Calquhoun is convinced that this common ground is the key to the success of the scheme. “It helps to break down negative stereotypes about Africa,” she says. “The children realise that these are young people like them who are interested in football and boyfriends, but just live in a very different environment.”
One unnamed young girl would agree. Her plaintive response calls to every teenager from here to Mombasa and beyond: “My biggest issue in life may not seem like a big deal, but it does to me. There is a boy in my year who I really like, but he doesn’t even know I exist. So I guess I will never get to talk to him. The biggest issue in my life is love.”
Advertisement
The Bigger Picture is the centrepiece of the British Museum’s Africa Live day tomorrow, 10am-5pm, Great Russell Street, London WC1 (020-7323 8299). The day features African music, storytelling and workshops.
The BBC and Link Community Development are seeking 1,000 UK schools to twin with schools in Africa in their World Class project. To find out more, visit www.bbc.co.uk/worldclass