Paganel Stories

After a truly eventful week, Paganel Archives is officially open.  On Friday 28th June we had a jam packed archive room - a room full of archives, stories, and some of the incredible creative responses children have made over the last week, and throughout the history of the school.



At the beginning of the week we had interviews with 24 local community representatives, including two former Head teachers from Paganel Primary school and many previous Paganel pupils from the very start of the school to the 1980s.  Every child in the school took part in those interviews which were all transcribed and prepared for our team of creative practitioners to work with every class (much thanks to Birmingham Archives and Heritage Outreach Team for support in that).  Meanwhile our Yr5 crack Archivist team have been preparing the catalogue, guidance on archives, and a tour for everyone in the school.

On Friday we combined with 'Parents in Paganel' to put on a top notch exhibition of our archives, archives inspired work and the Paganel Archives project, with cream cakes.  We were joined by our MP Gisela Stuart, Chris Upton, Local Historian and Senior Reader at Newmann University said a few words, and four of the children from our archives after-school club cut the ribbon to symbolically open our archives.  The archives themselves were so packed with parents, children and former pupils, it was hard to move.

Here are a few photos, clips and links to some of the stuff from last week:

Also see Paganel Primary School youtube channel for clips of Bobbie Gardner making songs with yr6, yr5 archive tour, yr4 making poetry with Roz Goddard, yr3 drawing a story with Prof Tom Jones,  yr2 photography with Brian Homer, yr1 Drama with Pyn Stockman, Songs and outdoor play with Clare Chapman for Nursery and Reception, all inspired by Paganel Stories from the interviews on Monday & Tuesday!

It is a repository archive so most of the collections are stored in the archive room at Paganel Primary School, which is open to public by appointment on Friday afternoons. However, our catalogue is available online here .

We are also working on a school website and http://weoleypedia.wikispaces.com/. There’s a bit of a backlog of material to put up, but we’re working on it and soon all the interviews, photos, film clips and other written material will be available online. Also try the school youtube for latest updates and some great short clips from ‘Paganel Stories’ week –http://www.youtube.com/user/PaganelSchool.

Paganel now has the first ARCHON registered repository archive in a state primary, and also the first weekly archive after-school club I’ve heard of – seehttp://archiveafterschoolclub.wordpress.com

It’s really impressive to visit, and we are working on making easier to search and navigate through online too.

Paganel Archives Launched

After many months of planning, we were finally able to launch Paganel Archives!  In true Paganel style, despite the Ofsted the week before, we ran workshops for the whole school throughout the day with some fantastic creative practitioners, to present a whole series of collaborative work on the theme of 'Our Faces and Places'.

Brian Homer, photographer involved in the original ‘Handsworth Self-portrait’  photo project, and also involved in the New Library self-portrait project at the moment, worked with Timm Sonnenschein and Phillipe worked tirelessly to support children and parents to photograph themselves.  Emma Ricketts led a game where children with pictures pinned to their backs, by asking questions attempted to draw what they have on their back (without looking at it!)  John Hill-Daniel  (film maker) explored the journey to school (background from previous work with Edgbaston Arts Table).  The children discussed their journey, things they enjoy about it, anything they dislike. They added interview clips and sound effects to the video to build a song.  Pyn Stockman (drama practitioner) used the audio pieces and photos from previous Local Heroes project, as a stimulus for further drama based work.  The groups create an action rhyme or spoken word poem.  Bobbie Gardner worked with young people to choose and cut up their favourite sound bytes and use loops to further enhance them creating soundscapes using music tech/puter to do this.Richard Albutt worked with photos taken around the school and maps to create a collaborative map of the school. Mrs Butler prepared a quiz about our local heroes, and Mr Philp also organised writing of blogs on the day - see http://www.paganelschool.com on 20th March for some great blogs from the children about the day.

I spent the day using OHP projectors, dinosaurs lurking in corners around the school, to make head and shoulder lines around everyone's silhouettes directly onto the main hall wall.  By the end of the school day we had everyone's silhouette on a giant school portrait across the main hall wall. The exhibition ran well, the main hall packed with visitors and parents. Every child had brought in an item to contribute to our archive, and created an impressive snap shot of our school to start our Archive. 

It felt like we packed a lot into one day, and hard to keep track of all that was happening. There's still a fair bit to archive from the day, a lot of learning for children and adults, but already feels like we are starting something exciting, important and unique - celebrating and documenting the lives of people in Paganel through the eyes of our children. In photos: