The Peace Table Project

The peace table is a simple wooden box that sits in the Montessori casa acting as a repository for complaints, slights, injustices and reconciliations from the age of about three. Reimagined here in four parts:

1. The Peace Table — The peace table sculpture is a collection of drawings and Polaroid photographs collected from the children throughout the school that describe their memories, both recent and distant, of using the peace table. They were podged onto a wooden table which was overwritten with their words about their experiences at the table and sealed under a resin pour. What was once a concrete materialization now becomes an abstract, symbolic mental map expressed as sculpture.
2. One Hundred White Poppies and Their Shadows — Inspired by the traditions of wearing white poppies and in recognition of the first Armistice of 1919, this work recalls one hundred years that we, as a human race, have actively wished for a future free of armed conflict.
3. One Thousand Cranes for Peace — This sculptural piece is made up of one thousand origami cranes installed in a cylinder to raise hope that the dreams of future children will not be destroyed by war.
4. Reflections in Five Colours — This installation was inspired by the prayer flags hung by members of the local Tibetan community. Following traditional methods of block printing with henna inks but using words collected from Orchard children, students created a ceiling full of inspirational flags.

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