AN ambitious project to collect six million buttons has captured the public imagination.
Staff working for the Kirklees Community History Service set the target as part of their 6 Million+ project.
They are appealing to the public to help them collect more than 6m buttons to create a thought- provoking installation in Huddersfield Art Gallery.
The work will commemorate those who lost their lives in the Holocaust and other genocides. Each button will represent a life lost.
Thousands of buttons have poured into collection points set up in Kirklees museums, Huddersfield Art Gallery and Dewsbury Town Hall.
Kirklees schools have also been collecting - with incredible results.
Batley Girls' High School in Howden Clough has handed over an amazing 250,000 buttons, 8,000 of which were collected by Year 7 students Bethany Wilson and Helena Sowden.
The latest donation has come from Jasmine Baker, a Year 9 pupil of All Saints School at Bradley Bar. She has given nearly 23,000 buttons - 22,718, to be exact!
She put up posters asking for buttons in the Halifax hospital where her Polish mother, Mariola, works and her stepfather, Michael, received buttons from local haberdashery shops he visited through his job in the clothing industry.
Collections have also been set up further afield.
Leeds Grammar School has started a collection and there have been collection centres set up across the city, notably among the Jewish community.
There have also been offers of large-scale gifts from London- based button makers, following an article in the Jewish Chronicle.
But despite the fun side of the challenge, great importance is being given to the serious side of the project.
Batley Girls' High School coupled its button collections to assemblies about the Holocaust, so pupils could make the link between it and the involvement of members of their families in the Second World War.
Pupils in other schools in Kirklees, including All Saints, are involved in making large buttons, to be incorporated into the installation and highlighting the stories of some of those people who have survived the Holocaust and other atrocities.
There have also been poignant stories behind the buttons given by members of the public, such as the elderly woman who handed over 21 buttons - one for every member of her family lost in the Holocaust.
"Those 21 buttons were hugely significant to that lady and it is important that people do not lost sight of why these buttons are being collected," said project leader Kim Strickson, of the Community History Service.
"We chose buttons because they come in all shapes, size and colours - just like people.
"They also remind us of the clothes removed from victims as they entered the death camps."
Artist Antonia Stowe is working on the installation with Kirklees secondary school pupils and Greenhead College students.
The work will be officially launched as part of the Kirklees Holocaust Memorial Day event on Wednesday, January 25, 2006.
It will be unveiled in Huddersfield Art Gallery before a commemoration event in the Town Hall, attended by the young people involved in making the installation.
* ANYONE who would like to give buttons should take them, ready counted, to one of the collection points - all Kirklees museums, Huddersfield Art Gallery and Dewsbury Town Hall - or phone the Kirklees Community History Service on 01484 223800.
