Hundreds of large-scale poppies, painted by students from local intermediate schools, will be placed around the cenotaph at Memorial Park for the commemoration of the centenary of Armistice Day at 11am on November 11.
This moving tribute is a collaboration between Tauranga City Council, The Incubator Creative Hub and schools in Tauranga and the Western Bay of Plenty with 320 poppies providing an emotive setting for the marking of the centenary of Armistice Day.
Peta Elliott, Xara Murray, Lekroop Kaur and Grace Gibson from Tauranga Intermediate are taking part in the poppy project, which aims to engage students in the history and meaning of Armistice Day.
"After four horrific years of tragedy and suffering, World War I came to an end with the signing armistice between Germany and the allied countries on November 11, 1918. On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the gory battlefields fell silent.
"As a group of keen artists, we've recreated the poppies that lay amongst the fallen soldiers who died while fighting for their country's rights. We have used a bright red colour to represent the blood of the wounded and dead soldiers. Each poppy has been made unique like all the soldiers on the battlefields risking their lives for the generations to come."
