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Classroom Portraits uses a combination of classroom photographs and student surveys to build a portrait of an experience that is shared by young people around the world – our school days. The photographs and information gathered from the surveys offer an insight into the attitudes of young people internationally and, together with an accompanying teachers’ pack, provide a stimulus for teachers and students to explore and exchange ideas about identity and different cultures.
In 2006-07, the British Council commissioned internationally-renowned photographer Julian Germain to conduct a series of classroom portraits of school-age children in Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. These pictures built on a successful pilot in schools in the North of England, supported by Creative Partnerships and Arts Council England.
As well as being photographed, the school children completed a questionnaire about their likes, dislikes, aims and aspirations, and their answers were analysed to provide an insight into the minds of young people within each country and across the region.
Subsequently, the British Council organised a touring exhibition of the photographs and produced a set of teachers’ notes and a pack of postcards containing selected classroom photographs and statistics from the countries surveyed. Together, these materials have been used by teachers to begin conversations in the classroom and between schools internationally.
The project was extended in 2009-10, with some of the schools involved in Connecting Classrooms in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Japan, Nigeria, Taiwan and their UK partners providing the focus for the photographs and questionnaires. Students and teachers in these schools have since been using the materials to enhance their understanding of their international partner schools and enrich their partnerships.
View some of the photographs on the Classroom Portraits gallery on Julian Germain’s website.
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