Posted by Aviva Dautch, workshop leader
On Friday I did a workshop for a group of American University students and this afternoon, I did practically the same session for a group of British Year 7s (that’s first year of Secondary School for those of you who, like me, went to school in the time of Upper Thirds and Lower Fourths).
It’s so interesting to see how much our own identity and culture inflects the way we interact with the exhibition and with the world around us. These two groups were almost as different as could be. The Americans were all Christians, visiting Britain for the first time, aged between 18 and 30; the school-children were mostly Muslim, with very strong British identities. When I tried to contextualise some of manuscripts in their historical period and look at what else was happening at the time they were being written, I realised how much my grasp of world history is the product of my own education.
1066 is one of the few dates almost every British kid knows. I have memories of shivering in our playground in brown rags (which someone decided was an appropriate costume) re-enacting the Battle of Hastings and the triumph of William the Conqueror, but none of the American students knew this, although one of their teachers was able to make a hazy guess about what was happening in England at the time. However, they all knew that ‘In fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue’, although not that in the same year Jews were exiled from Spain and fled to Portugal and Turkey. Most of the British kids had no idea what Christopher Columbus discovered, or even which country he was from.
I asked them to find what they thought was the most beautiful object in the exhibition and several chose the Kabah's cover, hanging in the centre of the exhibition and covered with fabulously woven gold and silver calligraphy. Others preferred carpet pages of the Sultan Babyars Qur’an, decorated with gold leaf and intricate patterns. They were mostly able to identify that it was written in Arabic and enjoyed learning a few words of Arabic and Hebrew and hearing how similar the languages are.
The one thing both groups shared – though speaking with very different accents – was an enjoyment of words. They were talking and questioning non-stop, clearly excited by what they saw. It’s so lovely to work with an exhibition in which both the visitors and I derive so much pleasure, although I have to admit that sometimes I understand why some of the monks who worked on these texts chose to live in silent orders!
Shalom. Salaam.
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