News

Thursday 16 October 2008

Japanese Picture Exchange 2008

The opening ceremony of Sellafield Ltds ninth annual Japanese Picture Exchange is being held on Monday 20th October at the Lakes College, to celebrate the exhibition of more than 100 children’s paintings.

The Picture Exchange, run jointly by Sellafield Ltd and Japan Atomic Power (JAPC), is a hands-across-the-sea project involving primary school children in the Sellafield area and the areas surrounding the Tsuruga and Tokai-Mura nuclear facilities in Japan.

This year Sellafield Ltd has worked closely with students from the Lakes College West Cumbria. Art students from the college have gone out into local primary schools and worked with the children to help them realise their ideas into images of the local area and its customs.

The 50 children from Victoria Junior School, Distington, Westfield, Beckstone Primary and Harrington Schools will be at the ceremony showing their work, along side the 80 pictures sent over from Japan.

Mr Hiroyuki Ono from the Japan Atomic Power Company, who is currently seconded to WANO (World Association of Nuclear Operators), and his wife will be arriving at 10am with representatives from Sellafield and will view a party science show, the exhibition of the pupils’ work and then have a tour of the college.

Speaking about the event, Pauline Farrell, Sellafields Education and Community Relations Officer said: “The children’s finished pieces, 10 from each of the 5 local schools and a similar number from schools in Japan will be displayed in college during October and November (20 October to 14 November). The artworks will then be sent to Japan for a series of exhibitions around the country in nuclear power areas.

The children are really looking forward to the party science show, there will be a variety of exciting visual experiments; layering liquids; making toothpaste; putting bicarbonate into a balloon and adding vinegar to demonstrate how to inflate a balloon without blowing into it and making raisins dance by dropping into a beaker of lemonade.