‘Life Lessons’ is a collection of portrait photos with poems, chronicling, in their own words; the life of teachers, school staff, and students still working in schools during the Covid-19 crisis.
These people kept coming together in all but empty buildings to look after each other on a front line despite the impact of the virus.
Life Lessons aims to provide school workers and children the opportunity to voice their hopes and fears and dreams during this difficult period, and the words they write a way to reflect on all this when relative normality returns.
Staff and students took part in a creative writing workshop with writer and teacher Paul Bateson to produce poems. Followed by photo portraits with photographer and teacher Mark Ratcliffe; to put the poems in context, placing the writer in the strangely empty places they write from, in contrast to the usual busy world of school.
The project was gratefully funded by Wakefield Council / Creative Wakefield