First ever Anne Frank Trust Education Symposium

The Anne Frank Trust UK held its first ever Anne Frank Symposium for educators at the former home of ballerina Anna Pavlova, now the London Jewish Cultural Centre in Hampstead, on 23 October. 

Teachers, local government representatives, and informal educators came from as far away as Scotland and Amsterdam to participate and discuss new ways of imparting Anne Frank’s message to young people.

Gillian Walnes, the Trust’s Executive Director, said:  “Through our various Anne Frank travelling exhibitions members of the Trust’s team get to meet some inspirational educators around the country. They are brimming with ideas on how to sustain the impact of the Anne Frank educational project and make a real difference to young people’s lives.  We wanted to get these people together to help us build an effective Anne Frank education community in Britain.”

A wide range of experiences were presented to the 40 participants.  Speakers during the day included Reverend Bruce Thompson of Somerset who talked about using Anne Frank’s story to tackle endemic racism in a rural community, Mukith Khalisadar and Rahim Hassanali, young Prince’s Trust ambassadors who work with the Anne Frank Trust, discussed the challenges of presenting the Holocaust to young people, and Karen Polak of the Anne Frank House spoke of the global reach of Anne Frank programmes, describing the effects of working among the street kids of Rio and in the townships of South Africa.

Karen Polak of the Education Department at the Anne Frank House, Amsterdam, thought "the opportunity of spending an intensive working day with the team at the Anne Frank Trust was central to the inspiration that I am sure everyone felt at being at the symposium.  Many expressed the wish for this to be a yearly event, something I would surely work towards."

The highlight of the symposium was a talk by the award wining novelist Deborah Moggach of the challenges of  adapting Anne Frank’s story for the forthcoming BBC dramatisation The Diary of Anne Frank.

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