Dear All,

In recent months Green Lane School has been proudly displaying four new murals painted to adorn one of the walls in the main school hall. The murals are the result of a week's intense activity overseen by a visiting artist who worked with teachers, parents and children. Each mural tries to convey images associated with 'place' and 'belonging'. To create the murals, children across the whole school were asked to draw pictures that showed particular landmarks in the town, in the North East and further afield across the nation. The best of these were then transferred onto the mural itself and 'painted in' by a team of willing volunteers.

• The first mural sets the scene: it features Green Lane School at its heart with the children and teachers going about their business in and around Green Lane's multitude of windows.


• The second mural shows us Barnard Castle: the Market Cross and the Church, the Bowes Museum and the Castle are given pride of place with the hills of Teesdale in the back ground.


• On the third mural we have iconic images from the North East (One North East would be proud!); the Tyne Bridge and the Angel of the North make it clear that our children see themselves as part of our North Eastern culture.


• Finally a mural that gives us a feel of what it means to be British: Buckingham Palace, the Eye, a Grenadier Guard on duty and Big Ben stand out from this picture.

Four murals? More than enough for one week's work (and the hall is running out of wall space) but the children could have created more couldn't they?
For they are modem young citizens of a wider European community set in a shrinking world - what pictures might you have added to convey these features of who we are?

Knowing our place in the world is so important to our sense of well-being. Knowing who we are and where we have come from gives a real sense of security that is no less real for being difficult to quantify. How crucial then is the work to enable our children to know that they are children of God, members of his family, loved from all eternity? That work takes place at Green Lane too.