Mexborough & Swinton Times – Saturday 08 February 1941

War Weapons Week

At The Schools

Poster and Slogan Competition

Something for Children

The schools of the five Don and Dearne Valley towns which are taking part in the War Weapons Week will play an important part. Competitions designed to give the children an insight into the need for and organisation of the effort are being arranged, as a result of which it is hoped the enthusiasm and interest of the children will be transmitted to their parents and a widespread fillip given to the drive to raise £350,000 in the area. Poster and slogan competitions will probably figure largely, but essay and model competitions will also be devised.

Mr. W. P. Turner, Managing Director of the ”South Yorkshire Times,” has promised to provide prizes, which will be savings stamps to the value of £1 for each secondary and senior school and 10s. for each junior school.

There is no suggestion of competition between the various schools although it may be thought desirable in some districts to arrange for public exhibitions of the most worthy posters or models. The competitions in the schools will be judged by the heads and staffs of each individual school as a purely internal matter. It is anticipated that the majority of schools in the townships concerned will join the competition and where the children are too small to enter competitions they will have short talks designed to enable them to understand the purport of the War Weapons Week and small handbills may be issued, though the primary object of this particular effort is to make the War – Weapons – Week – conscious and not simply to load them with literature on the subject.

Mr. J. Ritchie, headmaster of Wath Grammar School. is undertaking the general organisation of this aspect of the Week, and he explained to a ‘Times” reporter that at Wath the children would do small sketches of poster designs and the best of these would be redrawn and coloured in poster sizes with a view not only to exhibition at the school but also to their being shown at a central poster exhibition in Wath.

At Mexborough Secondary School a display of model aeroplanes will constitute the main competition. Mr Ritchie mentioned that even where a central poster or slogan exhibition was not arranged the children’s efforts might be used in the special displays at shops secured for the purpose or by shopkeepers who had expressed willingness to make displays on their own premises.

Next week it is hoped that a full list of the schools entering for the competition will be available.

Exhibitions of posters by schoolchildren will be held in Swinton and Kilnhurst during the Week. This was decided at a meeting of (Swinton Schools’ Advisory Committee on Friday. at which all schools in the district were represented. During the exhibitions short concerts will be given at intervals by the various schools. The poster and slogan competitions will start next week In Swinton and Kilnhurst.