Going and Coming...

Going and Coming is a fantastic resource which supports pupils and teachers in many curriculum areas, but especially Citizenship, PSHE, History and Geography. It can help address issues related to identity, diversity, citizenship and community.

On this site are hundreds of stories - with text, images and voice interviews -  describing the journeys made by children and their families from their countries of origin to Britain. These stories - sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant - address many of the issues familiar today, including asylum seeking, economic migration, poverty and family reunions.

Children from Primary Schools all over Yorkshire have contributed stories to a new Heritage Lottery Funded Teaching pack about migration.  The pack, with a foreword by Hilary Benn MP contains 25 of the best children's stories, along with lesson plans and an interactive CD Rom. It will be launched as part of the five year Going and Coming Project at the West Park Centre, Spen Lane Leeds on Wednesday 15th September 2010 from 13:00 to 15:00.

Since the project website was launched in 2009 over 250 children from sixteen schools have uploaded stories and audio of their interviews with family and friends. There have been over 22,000 page views from nearly 2,000 unique visitors. These have included visitors from 33 different countries, including Pakistan, Iran, India and Brazil.

"It has given children the opportunity to record the life journeys of their family that might have been lost." says Project Manager Marcia Hutchinson of Primary Colours, who was awarded an MBE for services to Cultural Diversity in the 2010 Queen's Birthday Honours list.

Evaluation by Hayton Associates has demonstrated a real increase in Cultural awareness. 73% of pupils identified an increase in knowledge of the background of the pupils and families in their schools, with the average grade of cultural awareness of pupils rising from 6.3 to 8.5, and in teachers from 8.3 to 9.3.

Over half the teachers surveyed said that the project had contributed to wider ranges of curricular and none curricular areas of learning, such as ICT, Literacy, English, Geography and PSHE, with two thirds of the teachers reporting that all areas of the ''Every Child Matters'' were identified from the project.
 
"The best thing about the project" says teacher Darren Foulkes of Manston St James Primary School in Leeds, "is that it has given the children a real purpose to their work and a real purpose to produce quality writing and quality research. It is all done within the idea that they can find out more about themselves, which is really important."
 
The project has been developed in partnership with Leeds City Council Arts and Heritage who will be bringing the project exhibition to local Libraries, Education Leeds, Artforms Dept, Sheffield City Council Ethnic Minority Achievement Department and North East Lincolnshire Local Authority who will also coordinate their school''s involvement and West Yorkshire Archive Service, who will preserve the website for posterity.