In November 2016, Keep Active Keep Active were fortunate enough to receive £10000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund.  This gives us a fantastic opportunity to deliver a comprehensive heritage programme to 5 schools across the area and teach children about the history of the local area from the early 1900s to present day.

The programme will involve working in partnership with a number of organisations in the area throughout June and July 2017.  John Sadler, a military historian, will be speaking to children in role as a wartime soldier.  They will gain an insight into how life would have been in the trenches during world war 2 and how soldiers coped with being separated from their friends and families back home.  Following a visit from John, Keep Active coaches will be putting children through their paces at a military style bootcamp giving them first hand expreience of the type of training the soldiers would have undertaken.

Other activities which will take place ion site at each school are story telling through art and cookery, learning how families survived on war time rations.

Partnerships off-site will include visits to:

  • Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens where children will travel back in time to explore life in the ship yards of the Wear.
  • The Maritime Heritage Museum where they will discover the life and times of local hero Jack Crawford.
  • Donnison School will take children on a journey around the East End of Sunderland telling stories of the heroes and villains of the area in the 1900s.

By the end of the week, children will have taken part in a broad range of activities and visits to areas of importance.  This will give them a great insight into Sunderland’s history and first hand experience of how we used to live.

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