Crafty youngsters shine a light on city’s Quaker roots

YOUNGSTERS have created a startling new structure at York’s Bootham School, celebrating the city’s famous Quaker background.
By The Newsroom
Published 7th Oct 2011, 07:00 BST

A group of 11 and 12-year-old pupils have created the structure to mark National Quaker Week at the school, founded by York Quakers in 1823 and which taught Joseph Rowntree, whose fortune from chocolate manufacture helped to establish the Rowntree Foundation, still influential today on social justice issues.

The structure is also inspired by the current installation Thirty Pieces of Silver – on display in the nave of York St Mary’s.

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Head of RE at Bootham Tracey Morley said: “This is part of a school wide range of activities to mark National Quaker week.

“Together with the school’s art department, we will be trying to interpret a number of Quaker themes around the ideas of peace and spirituality in the modern world.

“For Bootham, setting our education in the Quaker tenants of simplicity, equality, tolerance and peace, chimes well with children’s natural moral compass.”

The St Mary’s installation, which is by sculptor Cornelia Parker, features thousands of flattened objects arranged into 30 disc-shaped groups and suspended from the roof of the former church.

Related topics:YoungstersYork