I conducted a series of workshops on memories of school with the graduating sixth-year pupils of three elementary schools in Moriya City, Ibaraki Prefecture. Inspired by the display captions we often encounter at galleries and museums, the captions for the school memories were made and installed at the actual places associated with the individual memories. These captions were on view until the pupilsÅf graduation day, and in that time their schools became 'Museums of Memories'.
I believe that the pupils gradually managed to visualise the relationships between their memories and the associated sites through the investigation of their school, a site of their daily reality. In that process, the pupils and staff of each school began to see the relationships among the people and sites in an articulate form. This encouraged communication within the schools, and resulted in the building of more intimate relationships between pupils and schools.
I began the workshops with a lecture on the relationship between works (images) and captions. I then asked the pupils to draw up a chronology of their life at school, produce captions, exchange them with ones made by their classmates, and draw pictures based on the exchanged captions. They were also asked to find the locations referred to in the captions on a map. They visited the locations and held discussions about them. I believe that the workshops were enjoyable for the pupils and stimulated their sensibilities. At the end of the workshops the 'memory captions' were baked onto tiles, which were installed at the schools as lasting mementos of the pupils.