Unseen voices?

Developing new work in collaboration requires a combination of trust and risk. Any interdisciplinary learning art project aiming to tackle uncomfortable issues in new ways risks some degree of ambiguity and complexity: outcomes may be unpredictable. Unseen Voices was a project starting from these aspirational principles, because underneath there was a sense of purpose. We started with lots of questions. What is the real impact of a school-based project in the community? How can we tackle difficult issues using the arts? How do young people deal with discrimination, hatred, human rights abuse or gang violence? What happens when we bring these questions, in the form of a live performance, to venues?

‘Unseen Voices’ was an experiential learning and outreach project developed in partnership with Brent Council for Holocaust Memorial Day. The subject of the project was the rebuilding of people’s lives after the Second World War and the Holocaust, and the real story of 10,000 children refugees of the Kindertransport. The challenge was how to use original documentary film archives, digitised clips and photographs from 1940s to allow students to create a narrative that would engage them and the audiences emotionally, culturally and intellectually. We had to re-think, re-use and re-cycle to question all the time what is true and what is false, with all the shades in between. Everybody in the class connected with the story of separation and survival. By doing so we brought the emotional attachment that engaged students on a debate as well as creative participation.

Following a visit to the Imperial War Museum’s Holocaust Exhibition, interactive talks by Anne Frank Trust, a meeting with a survivor and a series of intensive research, editing, music composition and music workshops, we created a performance of live original music to a new digital silent film made by secondary music students from Preston Manor High School. A DVD of four documentaries and further resources was distributed to 100 schools in the Borough.

Bullying in schools and the workplace is a consequence of a culture of competitiveness, individualism and hidden expressions of racism. Bullying was not in the original agenda of our project. However, issues of cultural, religious, sexual discrimination were present throughout. Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses and homosexuals were also victims of the Holocaust alongside the six millions Jews. Sometimes it is easier to deal with internal local issues when we make an act of displacement on time and space. The whole exercise of looking back to the Nazi laws and the representation of the Holocaust on film brought out a healthy debate. The importance of remembrance was not an act of nostalgia but a way to relate past and present to question the future. Unfortunately issues such as bullying, genocides and violence are still relevant today.

The final performance took place at Brent Town Hall with the participation of Brent Junior Choir. Young children walked into the stage singing covering their mouths with lollypops showing various signs that identified the whole spectrum of victims of the Holocaust. They represented the unseen voices of victims and survivors. Maybe the only question to ask us is simply… why?