6,669 children and young people from 60 schools across the North East and 10 European countries took part in our Weaving Friendship project, as part of Express Yourself: North East Festival of Languages 2025.
Weaving is a way of telling and preserving stories and is a language that speaks of cultural identity, communal bonds and artistic expression. Children and young people wrote their own personal messages about friendship in English or their home or other languages and made them into weavings. These have been used to create a series of Friendship Trees and other displays, as a public art installation, available to view at Newcastle Civic Centre from April 2025.
The project aimed to give children and young people a voice and enable them to express themselves. They represented their own culture and feelings about friendship and shared these with other children and young people. Extending the hand of friendship across the region and the world, the Weaving Friendship project and Friendship Trees celebrate the bonds of friendship, support and unity across continents. The project is one of the Festival’s four creative multilingual projects, which enable children to participate in any language, making it inclusive and enabling schools to celebrate the cultural and linguistic diversity in their schools.
All schools taking part received a certificate and a photobook about the project, which includes lots of photographs, as well as acknowledgements of all who took part and supported the project. Click here to download the Weaving Friendship photo book.
Acknowledgements
- Special thanks to all the children and young people and their teachers in schools across the North East and Europe for creating and sending in their wonderful weavings (see schools’ list below)
- Thank you to artist, Sue Loughlin, for devising the project, producing the teachers’ resource pack and for creating and installing the Friendship Trees
- Thanks to Sarah Edgar at Newcastle City Council (School Effectiveness) for commissioning and leading the project, as well as for helping to prepare the installation and liaising with Newcastle City Council volunteers and facilities staff
- Thanks to Declan Baharini (CEO International Newcastle and Festival Co-ordinator) for working with Sue and Sarah to develop the project, promoting it and handling all the registrations and information going out to participating schools
- Thank you to the volunteers at Newcastle City Council for helping to put the weavings together and to the facilities staff, who made the installation at the Civic Centre possible
- Thank you to the North East Combined Authority, who provided the funding for this project commission, as part of Express Yourself: North East Festival of Languages 2025
Thanks to all the children and young people from North East and Tees Valley schools who took part:
Newcastle
- Central Walker CofE Primary School
- Broadwood Primary School
- St Teresa’s Catholic Primary School
- St Bede’s Catholic Primary School
- Wingrove Primary School
- Brunton First School
- West Denton Primary School
- Newburn Manor Primary School
- Simonside Primary School
- Benfield School
- Benton Park Primary School
- Our Lady and St Anne’s Catholic Primary School
- West Walker Primary School
- Kenton Bar Primary School
- Northern Counties School
- West Jesmond Primary School
- Hotspur Primary School
- Archbishop Runcie First School
- Cheviot Primary School
- St. Cuthbert’s Catholic Primary School, Kenton
- Chillingham Road Primary School
- Sacred Heart High School
South Tyneside
- Hebburn Comprehensive School
Gateshead
- St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School
- Washingwell Community Primary School
North Tyneside
- Christ Church Primary School
- EMTAS at The Langdale Centre (multiple schools)
- Holystone Primary School
- Battle Hill Primary School
- Waterville Primary School
Durham
- King James I Academy
- Bloemfontein Primary School
- The Ribbon Academy Trust
- St. Bede’s Catholic School and Byron Sixth Form
Northumberland
- Greenhaugh Primary School
- Bellingham Middle School
- Bellingham Primary School
- Heddon on the Wall St Andrew’s CofE Primary
Tees Valley
- North Shore Academy, Stockton
- Egglescliffe School, Stockton
- Reid Street Primary School, Darlington
- All Saints Church of England Academy, Stockton
Thanks to all the children from schools across Europe who took part in the project:
- 12th Primary School, Xanthi, GREECE
- Mudaki Projeto , Almancil, PORTUGAL
- Báthory School, Veszprém, HUNGARY
- Buciumeni Secondary School, Dâmbovița county, ROMANIA
- Istituto Comprensivo Ferrari di Vercelli, ITALY
- Szkoła Podstawowa nr 1, Międzyzdroje, POLAND
- Școala Gimnazială „Smaranda Dumitru Roman” Vizurești, Vizuresti, Dâmbovița, ROMANIA
- CEIP Suárez Somonte, Mérida, SPAIN
- CRA Los Alijares, Ibahernando, SPAIN
- DAREIC Nancy Metz, Nancy, FRANCE
- L’école Notre Dame de Kerbertrand, Quimperlé, FRANCE
- École Jean Zay Villeneuve-Saint-Germain, FRANCE
- Colegiul National Ienachita Vacarescu, Dâmbovița, ROMANIA
- Kaunas Jurgis Dobkevičiaus progymnasium, Kaunas, LITHUANIA
- École de Caillouël-Crépigny, Amiens, FRANCE
- Kindergarten at Agia Sophia Children’s Hospital, Athens, GREECE
- 13th Primary School, Xanthi, GREECE
- Calasancio Primary School, Córdoba, SPAIN
- WORLD Preschool, Mavisehir, Izmir, TURKEY
This project was funded by the North East Combined Authority:
This project was supported by:
