Children turn authors in recording their families' life journeys

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, in Leeds today.

Since the project website was launched in 2009, more than 250 children from 16 schools have uploaded stories and audio of their interviews with family and friends. There have been more than 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.

Seventy-three per cent of pupils identified an increase in knowledge of the background of the pupils and families in their schools.

More than half the teachers surveyed said that the project contributed to wider ranges of curricular and non- 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" agenda 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 Department, Sheffield

City Council Ethnic Minority Achievement Department and North East Lincolnshire Local Authority who will also co-ordinate their schools' involvement and West Yorkshire Archive Service, who will preserve the website for posterity.