Hanover students create 800 pinwheels for peace display
Working on pinwheels are Hanover High School students, from left, Lindsey King, Hannah Markle, Noah Haring and Renee Eisenberg.
Hanover High School students work to make 800 pinwheels for their “Pinwheels for Peace” project, which will be on display today outside the school.
Members of the Hanover High School National Art Honor Society make pinwheels to displace across the school’s lawn in honor of International Day of Peace.
HANOVER – Pinwheels are a symbol of childhood and simpler times, said Meredith Heagerty, a senior at Hanover High School. They represent the days when joy came easily, she said, and when cruelty was a distant concept.
And they signify a time before abuse and violence became so prevalent, senior Renee Eisenberg added.
Heagerty and Eisenberg, along with other members of the school’s National Art Honor Society, helped create 800 pinwheels that will be displayed across the high school front lawn today in honor of International Day of Peace.
The students said they hope the Pinwheels for Peace demonstration will remind people to be a little nicer and to find a personal way to help end the larger conflicts of our time.
“This is the one day of non-violence, where troops all over the world cease fire,” Heagerty said. “We are using art to make a movement.”
Each pinwheel is constructed from a paper square, decorated by an elementary student, folded into the pinwheel shape and held together with a straight pin and a pencil eraser.
The process is a little time consuming, Eisenberg said, as the group finished their 200th pinwheel on Tuesday, but the final product will be amazing to see.
Though Pinwheels for Peace was first introduced in 2005, senior Noah Haring said, he had never heard of it until Marie Smith, the art society advisor, suggested the project for the first time this year.
“We’d like to make it something even bigger for people to celebrate,” Haring said. “We want to spread the movement.”
Over the last nine years, the pinwheel count across the world has grown from 500,000 to 4 million per year, according to pinwheelsforpeace.com.