Art news

The image above is from Google Earth showing the Glen Grey Primary School buildings. There is a large football field in the middle of the photograph.

The avenue of trees that you see, separates the football field from the foot paths that lead to the rows of farm school cottages. The time of year is the dry season, just before the tropical rains begin in Zimbabwe.

A group of artists helped raise money in support of an initiative to save the little African farm school in Zimbabwe.

The African farm school called Glen Grey Primary School is situated on a farm, in the village of Glendale, in Zimbabwe which is a country in Africa.

The Glen Grey Primary School was built about 60 years ago. It has educated thousands of little African children over the decades.

Major Anthony Browne, a Ist World War veteran, built Glen Grey school back in the early 1900s. He went to Africa to work for a mining company. He bought a farm in Zimbabwe called Glen Grey, situated in the village of Glendale. He immediately set about clearing virgin bush land to establish a crop growing farm and a citrus orchard.

One of the first set of buildings to be build on the farm, was the Glen Grey Primary School. The school was established for the children of the working community on the farm. Glen Grey Primary School also took children from other farming families living in the surrounding area in Glendale. Major Browne, together with his wife Alice Browne, supported and paid for the running of the school throughout their lives.

Nicholas Browne, the son of Anthony Browne, continued to look after and support the teachers and the Glen Grey community school after his father died. All the teaching staff lived on the farm in cottages surrounding the school.

In the year 2000, all the owners and the working families on farms in Zimbabwe were forcibly evicted from their homes by state sponsored violence. It was terrifying. All that the people were able to take with them was what could be carried in a suitcase. The Glen Grey school was trashed and overrun by the ragtag militia of the tyrannical President of the country of Zimbabwe who is called Robert Mugabe. He ordered families off their land at gun point, including the teachers from the Glen Grey school, to a fate unknown! All the books, desks, blackboards, and teaching material at the school was ransacked and the buildings vandalised.

I believe that with the recent positive changes in Zimbabwe's government policy, a return of the school is possible and as a gesture of stubborn will on my behalf, I suppose, and in defiance of the negative scourge from the propaganda of the Mugabe tyranny which still today wishes to negate the goodwill that I believe I can testify to within the people of the country, I believe that by working with the local community of Glendale again, and with your help, I can restore the school so that it can continue to contribute to education in Zimbabwe.

I was born on the farm of Glen Grey in Glendale in Zimbabwe. Farmers and farm working families have lived peacefully together within the local community of Glendale for decades until the fateful day when families were evicted from their homes. My family and I came to live in Cheltenham, England in the year 2000.

Frances Browne (grand daughter of Major Anthony Browne. 2009).