Friday 20 May 2016

3000 Empty Chairs - Joan Lennon


The first chair by Jackie Morris

It started with Nicola Davies' poem The Day the War Came, written to draw attention to the UK's decision not to give safe haven to 3000 unaccompanied Syrian refugee children.  From there it has grown into a call for illustrators, authors, readers, parents, children to each contribute an image of an empty chair.  

Until there are 3000 of them.  

To say we disagree.

Please, consider sending an image.  It's not about your artistic skill.  It's about being part of an evolving symbol of support.  Teachers, parents - there's still time to let your pupils and children get involved.  

It's on Twitter at (hash)3000chairs and on the online Guardian page - have a look here for the details, and get drawing!  (Or painting or photographing or making a chair shape out of pebbles or post-it notes or ...) 

Thank you.


Also, if you've missed Tess Berry-Hart's powerful and useful posts about the refugee situation here on ABBA, just type her name into the Search this Blog box over on the right - well worth reading!


Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.
Silver Skin website.


2 comments:

Sue Bursztynski said...

Will do! But where I live, there has been a LOT of horrible treatment of refugees - detainment camps, refusal to even consider claims and don't get me into what HAPPENS in the camps (the government has, in the last few months, banned journalists and thrown out Save The Children and threatened those who work there with stiff penalties if they blab.) So what contribution I can make to a British issue, I don't know, but I will take a photo and post it on my blog.

Penny Dolan said...

Good to see the 3,000 Chairs project mentioned on ABBA. Thanks for reminding us about it!