We worked with 22 pupils from The Jewellery Quarter Academy and together we created a performance piece which became a collage of movement, poetry, music and text written by the pupils. We called the piece ‘Zigi Doesn’t Hate’.
A special moment was the opportunity to meet Zigi himself when he visited Birmingham for the project launch. The pupils were moved by his message of tolerance and respect and felt very privileged and excited to be able to meet him in person.
They were particularly inspired by the final words in Zigi’s testimony, “Do not hate”, and our piece revolved around that phrase. We remembered that Zigi was just a child when he lived through such terrible experiences and we thought about all the other children who did not survive.
We thought about all that lost potential, all those hopes and dreams that were never realised. In our performance we highlighted the potential of our young people today. The pupils shared their aspirations with the audience, their backgrounds and similarities and differences. They shared Zigi’s message that “we are all human” and they made a pledge — understanding it is not always sufficient to simply ‘not hate’, sometimes a stand has to be made.