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Applicant: Gallery Oldham
Award: £1000
Field: Arts, Education
Support for: artist fees

Project:

In 1865, Satsuma Students visited Oldham to learn about the textile industry. This visit lead to the purchase and export of equipment and materials from Oldham to construct and set up a cotton spinning mill in Kagoshima. To celebrate this 150-year-old link between Oldham and Kagoshima, a group of students from two schools (Crompton Primary School in Oldham and Hashima Elementary School in Ichikikushikino) collaborated on a project to learn about the history of this special link and to create a piece of artwork inspired by it.

Each school created half of an artwork which was to be joined together and displayed in concurrent exhibitions at the Satsuma Students' Museum in Kagoshima and at Gallery Oldham during the summer of 2017. The exhibition included not only the final art piece, but also a contextual history about the Satsuma Students and photographs of the work being made in Oldham and Ichikikushikino.

Through this collaborative project, pupils were able to learn more about the special link between Oldham and Kagoshima and gained an understanding of Japanese culture, helping to further develop a sustainable link between Oldham and Ichikikushikino and the wider Kagoshima Prefecture.