For Immediate Release                                                         Contact: Cordell Jordan

September 20, 2006                                                                           405.587.0232

Northwest Classen School Community Make Pinwheels for
“Whirled Peace”

Oklahoma City – As part of a international art and literacy project to promote peace, students in the Northwest Classen Learning Community of Oklahoma City Public Schools District  will be “planting” pinwheels with messages of peace. Students from Cleveland, Gatewood, Linwood, Madison, and Sequoyah Elementary Schools along with students at Taft Middle School, spent the past few weeks making more than 300 pinwheels for peace and will plant them at Taft Middle School at 2901 NW 23^rd Street beginning at 7:00 a.m. Monday, September 25.
     Pinwheels for Peace is an art installation project started last year by two Art teachers, Ann Ayers and Ellen McMillan, of Coconut Creek, Florida, as a way for students to express their feelings about what’s going on in the world and in their lives.  In 2005, groups in over 1,325 locations throughout the world were spinning approximately 500,000 pinwheels.  Locally, art programs in the Northwest Learning Community will be coordinating the Pinwheels for Peace project this year.
     This project is non-political – peace doesn’t necessarily have to be associated with the conflict of war, it can be related to violence/intolerance in our daily lives, to peace of mind.  To each of us, peace can take on a different meaning, but, in the end, it all comes down to a simple definition: “a state of calm and serenity, with no anxiety, the absence of violence, freedom from conflict or disagreement among people or groups of people.”
     For more information, go to http://www.pinwheelsforpeace.com or contact Sara Chan at 405-946-1431.
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