Tricky histories can be safe, accessible, and relevant for all.
What is The Korczak Forest?
The Korczak Forest is a growing collection of free sensory resources exploring challenging histories through accessible, relationship-centred approaches.
Inspired by the life and legacy of Janusz Korczak, we are committed to creating and freely sharing at least one new sensory resource each year. Together, these resources form a digital forest of remembrance, education, and reflection.
Collar & Cuffs Co also has a place within the real Korczak Forest being planted at Treblinka. We have sponsored a tree dedicated to this mission, creating a living link between remembrance and action.
Treblinka was the site where Janusz Korczak, his colleagues, and the children in their care were murdered in 1942. Their ashes lie among those of approximately 900,000 Jewish and Romani people murdered at the camp between 1942 and 1943.
Each year, we will "water" our tree by creating a new free sensory resource,
helping the forest continue to grow through acts of remembrance, learning, and accessibility.
Our Ethos & Approach
Difficult histories belong to everyone.
Stories of persecution, genocide, war, displacement, loss, resilience, and survival help us understand both the past and ourselves. Yet people with learning disabilities, complex needs, and younger children are often excluded from engaging with these histories because resources can be inaccessible, abstract, or overwhelming.
We believe access should not stop where complexity begins.
Through sensory storytelling, oral histories, creative engagement, and relationship-based learning, we aim to create safe and meaningful routes into histories that can be difficult to encounter through traditional educational approaches.
We have also frequently come across people with learning disabilities who have been left with anxieties and
misinformation about distressing historical and contemporary events. We feel it is important to help people with learning
disabilities to have safe, trauma-informed opportunities to revisit history, process with skilled support, challenge
misinformation, and develop informed, personal responses to the world around them.
Our practice and resources are:
• Grounded in oral history and primary sources, placing real people's voices, experiences, and sensory worlds at the heart of learning.
• Built around authentic materials wherever possible, using carefully chosen objects, sounds, smells, textures, images, and stories to support sensory exploration.
• Aligned with established best practice in Holocaust and genocide education, avoiding role-play, re-enactment, invented narratives, and activities that risk trivialising historical events.
• Evidence-based and historically rigorous, encouraging curiosity and critical thinking while remaining faithful to the
historical record.
• Trauma-informed and regulation-aware, creating opportunities for reflection and emotional processing whilst helping participants feel safe, supported, and able to engage at their own pace.
• Designed to make complex histories accessible without reducing their complexity, creating meaningful routes into
difficult subjects for people with learning disabilities and younger learners.