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Persian Culture Workshops

Iranian-born artist Jila Peacock and internationally-renowned sitar player Anoosh Jahanshahi from Tehran joined pupils and teachers at Portsmouth Grammar School in September 2007 to explore Persian music, poetry and art.

As well as working with pupils from the PGS Junior School in Year 6, Jila and Anoosh also collaborated with children at Milton Park Junior School and Steep C of E Primary School, near Petersfield, in a series of special workshops.

The children explored shape poems created by Jila Peacock from animal and bird images in Persian poetry and heard songs specially composed by Anoosh. They were encouraged to create performances using the sound and movement of their own animals and birds, and to experiment with their own animal shape poems.

Many of the children’s paintings were included in an exhibition in St Thomas’s Cathedral to coincide with world premiere of a work commissioned from award-winning composer Sally Beamish- ‘The Lion and the Deer’- which offers a vision of the peace that could be possible between East and West, and is based on Jila Peacock’s translations.

Here is a selection of images from the collaboration with an accompanying soundtrack of Anoosh’s song, ‘Fish’, performed on the Persian sitar. Click Here

Portsmouth Grammar School, High Street, Portsmouth, Hampshire, PO1 2LN

Tel: Senior School (023) 9236 0036Nursery & Junior School (023) 9236 4219