We’re delighted to announce that on June 17th children’s literature agency Pop Up Projects launched a special edition of The Corona Collection – A Conversation. More than 2,000 copies were printed and generously gifted to select schools across the country. Each school also received a teaching guide to help facilitate meaningful conversations using the poetry in the classroom.
The Corona Collection – A Conversation grew out of a concern for the mental health and wellbeing of children amid the restrictions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Driven by the urgency of the situation, Cheryl set out to create a new poetry collection drawn directly from children’s experiences.
This powerful combination of poetry and wellbeing resonated with the team at Pop Up Projects. This special edition will help educators and parents around the country to spark valuable conversations with children about mental health and wellbeing – conversations that will be crucial over the next few months, and well after the restrictions have been lifted.
Pop Up has created a special showroom on its website where teachers can upload pupil responses.
Dylan Calder, Executive & Creative Director at Pop Up Projects commented: “For the nation’s children, the Covid-19 ‘lockdown’ can represent everything from a surprise holiday and intimate time with family to the separation of friendships, the trauma of parental unemployment, and untold grief for lost loved ones. While world news and daily death tolls punctuate our hours and days, it is vital that we allow children to tell – and that we listen to – what they’ve seen and felt. Cheryl’s verbatim collection, driven by an activist’s passion to capture unheard voices too easily lost in the noise of crises, represents an opportunity to put something into the hands of the children and teachers Pop Up work with, to help ease them into the urgent need to talk, share and listen.
“Everything we do at Pop Up is about transforming lives through literature. By printing this free pamphlet edition of Cheryl’s still-evolving collection we can offer thousands of our young readers a little something to heal the mind and heart as they return to the new ‘normal’ of socially distanced schools.”
You can find out more about Pop Up Projects and support the organisation’s valuable work at pop-up.org.uk.