Commission 1

Client - London City Council

Team - Safety Officers

Commission - To explore and recover evidence, aiding in creating a Great Fire of London point of interest. 

The evidence box. 
 

An exciting delivery arrived in our classroom. A box labelled evidence… We wondered what on earth could be inside. We discussed whether we should open it or not… 

We were very careful. Inside was a map, burnt wood and what looked to be a letter.

We noticed the word smelt like fire, and the letter, which we discovered was a diary, discussed a fire near London Bridge…

We wondered what all this meant.

Land for sale in London.

We watched as a sign was drawn. “Land for sale in London”. If we could add anything to London, what would it be? We discussed all of our ideas and designed them, adding them to the blank plot of land. We then wrote a letter to the council, explaining our interest and sent them our designs. We are awaiting their response.

Discoveries on the building site.

We watched as a builder on the empty land dug, preparing the site. His shovel hit something hard. He dusted away more and more mud, revealing what looked like burnt, old, tiles. We discussed together where these could have come from. We remembered a fire was mentioned in the diary entry we found a couple of days before. We decided these must be related…

Back in the classroom, a letter was delivered. It was from a man called Mitch at London City Council. It said…

Hello,

Due to the important history of this site, all work must stop until further investigation.

However, if you are interested, we do need support on our Fire Safety Officer team.

They were established during the Great Fire of London in 1666 and are very important. 
If you are interested, please visit the site next week, Pudding Lane. London. 
 

Yours sincerely, 

Mitch

We felt excited! We wondered if the evidence we had been delivered came from the Great Fire of London?

We decided we would become the new Fire Safety Team. We began by looking at the equipment the previous safety team would have used in 1666, during the Great Fire. Leather buckets, hooks, water pumps, ladders and carts. We spent a while discussing how we thought each piece of equipment would be used. We then used drama to have a go, passing buckets down a long line of people, using hooks to pull down burnt buildings and climbing ladders to rescue people in distress. We then teamed up and created some freeze frames, representing each use of equipment. 

We even practiced a real bucket chain!

The Safety Officers

The next day, the children noticed some paintings in the office. Together, we studied the paintings. We decided they must be of the 1666 safety officers, fighting the Great Fire of London. The closer we looked, we noticed they did not look very safe. We discussed what equipment and clothing a modern day safety officer would need and decided this is what we would wear before we visited the site. 
We then represented ourselves, ready to visit the site. 
 

We stumbled across an envelope. After peaking inside, we saw an old wooden emblem. We couldn’t quite work out what it was, so we took a crayon rubbing to make the image clearer. We noticed a bucket, ladder and fire, with the initials S.O. We decided this must have been the 1666 safety officers team badge, and made our own.

Representing the site

Out of the story, the children represented the pudding lane site, where all the discoveries were being made. They worked together to create the various elements of the site, including all the equipment they would use and the vehicles they would drive. The site looked fantastic. We were ready to use it in our story.

Cracking the code.

Upon arrival, the team came across a problem. Mitch had left a note with the code for entry, but his coffee had stained and hidden the last two numbers! All we knew was the code for the door began with 4 4. Luckily, the security guard heard us, and although it wasn’t safe to shout the password out loud, he could give us some clues to help us guess it.

Using our place value and addition knowledge, as well as trial and error, we finally cracked the code! 

The floorboards 

Upon our entry to the site, we were approached by an excited and flustered Mitch. He explained that an important discovery had been made right where the Pudding Lane Bakery once stood. We gathered round whilst overhearing a builder state that looked like damaged floorboards. We agreed. 
 

We paused the narrative and discussed together how we could make them look more realistic for our story. We decided to draw and add details. 
 

We then used drama to carefully lift the boards out of the ditch, making sure to imply how heavy yet precious they were.

Thomas Farriner

We had questions for Mitch. Why was this Bakery important? How did the fire start? Why did it spread so quickly?

Mitch explained that a baker, called Thomas Farriner had gone to bed one evening without blowing out his fire. 
 

The fire began… with the houses being so close together, the fire spread and spread. We discussed how we would never want a problem like this to happen again. Mitch agreed and gave us our next commission. He asked us to create an exhibition, teaching the people of London about the events of the Great Fire. He suggested we began with the bakery…

Representing the bakery.

The fire begins.

Mitch left us a note. He wanted to see the beginning of the fire.

We paused the story and understood that to do this, we were going to start simple print making in art. We knew that to print, we had to transfer paint or ink from a “plate” to a surface. We decided our hands would make great flame shapes and we could print using those! 
Using hot, fiery colours we printed many flames and added these to the exhibition. 

The spread.

Next, Mitch wanted us to represent exactly how the fire spread. He sent us four images. We worked on that the fire started on pudding lane, spread to the markets, St. Paul’s cathedral and finally, London Bridge, before it stopped.

The team used blocks to represent each building and then created flames with paper, leading from the bakery all the way to London Bridge. They enjoyed singing “London Bridge is falling down”.

Samuel Pepys.

Mitch sent us some more pieces of diary, much like we found in the box. We discovered that these came from Samuel Pepys, a rich man, who was alive at the time of the fire. He wrote everything down! We call these eye witness accounts. 
Mitch wanted us to represent him in the exhibition, so we figured he must have been important…

King Charles II

We discovered through the diaries that Samuel Pepys was important as he passed the message to the king! He was the first person to notice the fire. 
We created some still images based on the diaries of people fleeing, sparks flying, flames crackling and Pepys telling King Charles.

We discovered that King Charles was a very important and powerful man. We was also a very well liked King, who had made lots of changes since Oliver Cromwell. We learnt that people liked King Charles because he threw lots of parties! After learning of the spread, King Charles ordered soldiers to tear down all the buildings to stop the spread. 
 

After adding this to our exhibition, our first commission was complete.

Commission 2

Client - Mitch (London City Council)

Team - Safety Officers 

Commission - Using our knowledge of fire and safety, support the design and building of new, suitable housing for the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire.

The blank newspaper

We saw Mitch in his messy, cluttered office. He was shaking his head, reading a newspaper. We listened closely. He was muttering something to himself… “not again, this can’t happen again…”

We paused. What was he talking about? Again? What again?
 

We had a closer look and noticed the paper he was reading was blank. In amongst all the rubbish in his office, we found some words. We decided these must form the heading of the paper and decided to unscramble them.

 “History repeats its self. London’s Grenfell Tower Fire”

What could this mean? What was a Grenfell? We knew London…. We decided there must have been another fire in some sort of tower. We just didn’t know what? Noticing the large space on the paper, we decided that must be where a photograph went. We drew our own, thinking carefully about what the heading could mean.

Grenfell Tower.

In amongst some more scraps from Mitch’s office, we found some torn up paper. We carefully turned over each piece, noticing features on each one. Windows, fences, buildings? We wondered if perhaps the pictures fit together to create one big picture? They did!

The picture revealed a large tower block. This must be Grenfell Tower, we decided. But we weren’t sure what could be inside such a large building… we wrote our ideas down. A hotel, a swimming pool, a police station, shops, hospital. It could be anything…

We listened to a Mitch on the phone. We couldn’t hear much, but we heard him say, block of flats.

We decided this must be Grenfell. We discussed that in blocks of flats, people live one on top of each other, very closely. The team realised this was very similar to the closeness of the houses in the Great Fire of London! We wondered if this meant the fire spread quickly at Grenfell too…

Understanding Grenfell 

We saw Mitch storm through his office. He dropped his folder. We stared, wondering if we should open something they could be private. We decided that if we were to help Mitch, we needed as much information as possible.

We carefully opened the folder. Many of us gasped! Images of Grenfell during the fire and the people who helped with the rescue. The files taught us a lot. 70 people had died and 600 people lost their homes. To help remind us that Grenfell was flats and not houses, the team wanted to create a visual representation…

The survivors 

Mitch called us. He explained he was extremely busy and didn’t have time to meet some of the brave people who had survived. He asked if we would meet with them. We made our way to the Temporary Housing Office. Here we met 3 people.

Harold (86). He is having trouble sleeping since the disaster, he hears the alarms non stop.

Stacey (28). Her children keep asking when they can go home. In their temporary accommodation, animals are eating out of the bins and making noises. It is scaring them.

Malikai (17). He is worried nothing will change. He doesn’t want to live in another flat. He lost his family

The team were shocked and touched by the survivors stories and knew they needed immediate help and support. We first made “profiles” to feed back their information to Mitch.
 

We then decided first, we would look into supporting Stacey and her children…