River of Hope is an arts-based learning project led by Thames Festival Trust, in partnership with the British Council in France and Norfolk & Norwich Festival in England.
The project employs the creative arts as an inclusive and engaging means to connect schools worldwide through the study of rivers and the impact environmental changes and the climate crisis have on them. River of Hope offers young people the amazing opportunity to create artworks under the guidance of inspirational professional artists.
The British Council has helped ten primary schools in Seine-Maritime link up with ten primary schools in Norfolk and each school will work with an artist to produce a piece of work expressing their concerns about the climate crisis.
This activity involves direct collaboration between UK and French schools, which will be paired and exchange online, reinforcing the longstanding relationship between the two twinned cities by connecting their children and young people. The activity benefits teachers too, providing them with access to a host of online resources aimed at encouraging the inclusion of climate change topics in their curriculum teaching. It also gives them skills and confidence to apply art-based learning to their practice.
The pieces produced by the school will be publicly exhibited in Rouen and Norwich as flags. The students from the 10 schools in France will gather on May 16th in Rouen to discover the 10 flags at an outdoor exhibition.
This project is funded by the French Ministry of Education, sponsors, and the British Council, and developed through a partnership between the City of Rouen, Thames Festival and Norfolk & Norwich Festival, supported by Historic England.
