Students at Newcastle College recently helped put together displays of peace cranes for the North East Festival of Languages 2024.
Now in its fourth year, the North East Festival of Languages is a celebration of the diverse languages and cultures of the region.
As part of this year’s celebrations, school communities from 19 different countries came together to make peace cranes and write messages of peace to be displayed in schools, colleges and community buildings across the North East of England.
In Japanese folklore, the crane is seen as a symbol of peace, said to live for 1,000 years. Sadako Sasaki, a 12-year old Japanese girl who died of “atomic bomb disease” following the fallout of Hiroshima, folded paper cranes as her personal call for peace. Children from all over the world began a movement, folding cranes and sending them to the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima.
80 schools from the North East of England were involved in making Peace Cranes. A selection of these have been sent to Japan’s Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and added to the children’s peace memorial, while others are on display in the reception area of the Mandela building at Newcastle College.
Hear more from the students who helped create the displays: Festival of Languages: Peace Cranes project. (youtube.com)