Where is our tapestry?

This is the question on the lips of hundreds of disappointed schoolchildren across the district, who all put hours of work into producing a giant tapestry for the Millennium Dome.

Some 1,700 schools across the country bought £58 kits from the Millennium Tapestry Company - a non-profit making firm - believing each beautifully stitched panel would form part of a giant tapestry to be displayed at the Dome.

But, even as pupils sat busily stitching their masterpieces a letter posted eight months ago had already sealed the tapestry's fate.

Yesterday (Thursday), Sharon Sciachettano, headteacher at North Primary and Nursery School in Colchester, described the whole situation as "a bit of fiasco".

Junior pupils at the school put months of work into creating the one-and-a-half-metre square tapestry which focused on changes in food and technology in the 20th century.

Mrs Sciachettano said the school only found out the tapestry was not on display when one child visited the Dome and asked to see her work.

"It is very disappointing for the children and it is discourteous that nobody bothered to write and say it would not be on display.

"I would imagine a lot of children from other schools will have gone to the Dome to see their work and I would imagine there are quite a lot of really angry parents, teachers and children."

Mrs Sciachettano said the children were proud of their efforts and would like the tapestry back so it could at least be displayed in school.

"We paid £50 for a tapestry kit on the understanding it would be displayed in the Dome," she said. Every child at the Chapel Hill School, in Braintree, had a hand in making their Journeys tapestry.

And come the school trip to the Dome in April, the children were eager to see their work displayed.

"Of course, the tapestry was not on display and was nowhere to be seen," said school secretary Pauline Page.

A spokesman for the Millennium Dome said: "The Millennium Tapestry Company was told more than eight months ago that the tapestry would not be going in the Dome."

He said the New Millennium Experience looked at the proposal two years ago and decided there was no room to house the tapestry.

"The real story is 370,000 kids have been badly let down - there is no question of that. It is an absolute shame," he said.

The chief executive of the Bicester-based Millennium Tapestry Company Ltd, Lizzie Owen, said the work by Essex school pupils would go on display in the Fairfield Halls in Croydon throughout August.

She is looking for other venues closer to Essex to display the pupils' work.

"I can totally understand why the schools are feeling fed up."

Mrs Owen said her correspondence had only said she was hoping the tapestry work would go in the Dome.

She said she had not contacted schools in October last year when the company heard there was no place in the Dome for the work.

"We were receiving the hundreds of tapestries in. In hindsight we should have done that."

'Where's our tapestry?' ask pupils

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