CHANDIGARH, March 31: Another website on Punjab will soon be added to the Internet, but with a difference. For this will be done in Shropshire, a county in England, with the help of teachers and students of both the places.With this in mind, a team of teachers from Shropshire has reached Chandigarh and has already begun its research on Punjabi life and culture.The Shropshire-Punjab Cultural Exchange programme, being conducted jointly by the Patiala-based Heritage and the Shropshire County Council, has focussed on teachers after artists and writers.The threesome of Julie Blackford, Gwyneth Watkins and Innes Jones from the schools of Shropshire intend to visit the city schools in order to encourage communication between the students. ``The students will also work with us to prepare the website, for it will be like a train journey through the heart of Punjab, from the children's point of view,'' Julie, who heads the Department of Religious Studies at a school there, said.But why the stress on Punjab in an English county? Gwyneth, who handles only Asian children as a part of the team of Bilingual Learning Support Teachers, said, ``We have a lot of Punjabis in Shropshire, from both East and West Punjab. My effort is to prepare what we call the ethnic minority there to get equal opportunities.'' Gwyneth, an artist whose forte is modern creative embroidery focusing on phulkari, will have her exhibition at Art Folio from April 17. But what drew her to phulkari? ``I like challenging the boundaries.'' That is what the whole exchange programme is about.
