The Locomotive project by Click Academy

Online, October 10, 2010 (Newswire.com) - The history of the Jews in Poland dates back over a millennium. Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in Europe. Poland served as the centre for their culture, starting from a long period of religious tolerance and prosperity among Polish Jewish population, to its nearly complete genocide destruction by Nazi Germany in the 20th century after the German and Soviet occupation of Poland in 1939 and the ensuing Holocaust. Jews were big contributors to all fields of Polish culture including science, sport and art.
The Jewish cultural scene was particularly vibrant in pre-World War II Poland with numerous Jewish publications and over 116 periodicals. The Jewish authors of the period, among them Julian Tuwim, made important contributions to Polish literature. In Poland, generations of children are reading the classic Tuwim's children's poem "Locomotive". It is a funny and amusing story about a train written in beautiful, poetic language.
Project The Locomotive by Click Academy will involve 33 young people working together using an unusual technique called pinhole photography to produce a bilingual, professionally-printed picture book of Polish-Jewish poet Julian Tuwim's famous "Locomotive" poem for children. The book is aimed at helping Polish children aged 4-7 to adapt to the British educational system. To create illustrations to the poem the group will construct handmade photo cameras.
The young people will then organize and run a series of creative outreach events including a travelling exhibition, internet promotion, public readings and teacher training workshops.
The book and its outreach events aim to show a positive picture of Polish and Jewish people and richness of their culture, demonstrating the similarities and celebrating the differences. The project's idea came from consulting 40 teenagers attending a Polish Saturday school in Camden.
The project is financially supported by MediaBox, Embassy of the Republic of Poland and Polish Culture Institute in London.
Pinhole photography is lens less photography. A tiny hole replaces the lens. Light passes through the hole; an image is formed in the camera. Pinhole cameras are small or large, improvised or designed with great care. Cameras have been made of sea shells, many have been made of oatmeal boxes, coke cans or cookie containers, at least one has been made of a discarded refrigerator. Cameras have been cast in plaster like a face mask, constructed from beautiful hardwoods, built of metal with bellows and a range of multiple pinholes. Station wagons have been used as pinhole cameras - and rooms in large buildings. In principal, a pinhole camera is a box, with a tiny hole at one end and film or photographic paper at the other. Designing and building the cameras are great fun. Making images with cameras you had made yourself is a great pleasure too. Pinhole images are softer - less sharp - than pictures made with a lens. The images have infinite depth of field. Wide angle images remain absolutely rectilinear. Exposures are long, ranging from half a second to several hours.

If you would like to be to be involved helping us to deliver any of the project activities please feel free to contact:

Olga Glazik, [email protected]
Marta Kotlarska [email protected]