Report by Mr. Filip Deheegher, the City of Ypres, Belgium
In 2020, the City of Ypres Peace Service invited nursery and primary schools to take part in the ‘Patchwork on Peace’ initiative. Children of 19 schools took part in the initiative. The concept is to have a class at school in which children think about and discuss peace. They were asked a question, “what is peace?,” then visualised and expressed their answer on a large sheet of paper as drawings.
Image: Courtesy of the City of Ypres
The end result of the project is a very colourful, digitally printed ‘patchwork’, measuring 6.5 by 2 metres. It clearly shows that peace cannot be defined unambiguously. The work makes many associations with peace-related themes, places peace at various levels and draws attention to a number of peace symbols. By working on the patchwork, the children realized that ‘peace’ is more than the absence of war―but the word also describes a very positive state that everyone is all equal, and everyone pays attention to the climate and the earth.
The patchwork will be exhibited as banners at the Ypres library and the entrance hall of the Ypres City Hall, so that the visitors can discover for themselves what children think of ‘peace.’
Mayor Talpe of Ypres commented: “Children approached peace in a colourful and above all positive way. This is a clear message that we, as a city council, together with the children, would like to share with citizens and visitors. We will distribute bookmarks with the patchwork printed on to the visitors of the library and museums in Ypres.”