Article 6

All children have the right to life.
Governments should ensure that children survive and develop healthily.

DSC05977The art dept used this opportunity to allow all art students to comment on the above statement. Based upon old traditions and the influence of Yoko Ono in recent years, the students were involved with cutting and attaching their wishes to the 3 trees which suddenly sprouted in the art rooms. Each student cut out their leaf upon which they wrote their own personal statement / wish and then attached it to the branches. The work in progress and the Art Dept Wish Trees can be viewed in the photographs of the days activities. Click on the thumbnails.

DSC05993A Wish Tree is an individual tree, usually distinguished by species, position or appearance, which is used as an object of wishes and offerings. Such trees are identified as possessing a special religious or spiritual value. By tradition, believers make votive offerings in order to gain from that nature spirit, saint or goddess fulfillment of a wish.

JG Tree x1Yoko Ono’s influence for Wish Tree is connected to her early childhood experiences in Japan: “As a child, I used to go to a temple and buy a printed paper wish sold at the temple and tie it around the branch of a bush. Bushes in temple courtyards were always filled with people’s wish knots, which looked like white flowers blossoming from afar,” she said.