drawing resounding / Echo Eternal (2018)—King Edwards Grammar School. A collaboration with MUSIC AND SOUND ARTIST Richard Shrewsbury
Broadcaster Natasha Kaplinsky recently documented, one-hundred and twelve Holocaust Survivor testimonies, through filmed interviews with living survivors. Working with the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, to share this serious subject, Echo Eternal is a programme that facilitates young people to explore this crucial aspect of our history, through creative projects—generating a series of echos. In 2018, a group of young people from King Edwards Grammar School in Birmingham, received a testimony, that of Holocaust Survivor Dov Reichmann.
Working with this group of academically accomplished young people, had particular challenges. They were adept in anticipating what adults wanted to hear, and in navigating those expectations in an educational setting. This initially led to a lack of physical expression and emotional engagement. At first, they were self-conscious and uncertain in their creative expression, and their artwork was hesitant and tentative.
Challenging these young people to work in a large format, enabled them to move beyond common constraints, and supported greater skill development and artistic expression. Working on walls and floors, utilised their whole physicality, to communicate ideas, thoughts and emotions through gesture. The addition of a wide range of mark-making materials and equipment (like rollers, scrubbing brushes, sponges and scratchy gloves) created more opportunities for experimentation and exploration, less obvious tools allowing for different gestural marks and more dynamic expression. Both elements expanded their creative boundaries, equipping them with experiences that challenged some preconceived notions of drawing.
The young people sought hard to understand the history that Dov’s story relates to, and with a great deal of empathy engage with the individual and complex personal experiences, that his testimony describes. Six young people created the six final artworks. Within these large drawings, there’s a beautiful array of expressive marks which were adeptly and sensitively employed, to portray various aspects of Reichmann’s account. Animating both their storytelling and Reichmann’s memories. Some focused on single aspects of his testimony, specific reflections that compelled and moved them, devoting their whole drawing into communicating one distinct event in his story. Others addressed the broad range of experiences that he shared, layering narratives on top of narratives, sometimes literal and sometimes abstract. The powerful drawings are articulate, considered and solemn, a depth of meaning giving weight to their marks.
Working with music and sound artist Richard Shrewsbury (Birmingham Conservatoire), young people in a separate group formed a musical ensemble. Using collaborative composition and performance techniques (exploring tempi and timbre, texture and tone, emotion and sound) to make musical decisions and react to the images created by those who were drawing Reichmann’s story. The music ensemble and spoken-word piece, combined with visual narratives from the drawings, evolved into a collaborative multimedia film—Drawing Resounding.
Drawing Resounding was created in collaboration with Richard Shrewsbury, animating the young people’s music, sound and drawing together in one collective creative interpretation of Dov Reichmann’s testimony.
Drawing Resounding featured in Echo Eternal Horizons performances at Birmingham Town Hall in 2019 and 2020. Echo Eternal was an arts, media and civic engagement project inspired by the testimonies of Survivors of the Holocaust, created for the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation.
Echo Eternal was developed by Core Education Trust with the following partners
The Art of Taking Part 