Walking and working together.

During the first lockdown last year, Priory Purpose, the Sixth Form student-led initiative that seeks to serve the community through fundraising via projects such as their annual Fright Night, created a website called Creativity Counts.  Moved by how so many children had no access to creative learning our Sixth Form sought to help to remedy the situation by raising funds to buy Chromebooks for families whose children cannot currently access remote learning.

Creativity Counts is a drive to bring access to creativity resources to as many children as possible. This might be creative resources in the more traditional sense of the word, such as Art, Music or Drama, but also materials to enhance creative thinking which spans all subjects of the curriculum.

The Creativity Counts website states, ‘Creativity is at the centre of so much of our lives, from our expression of who we are, to how we think and how we feel. Creativity is a vital part of how we learn, as a creative way of learning often means thinking outside of the box and doing things in a unique or original way.’

This programme developed during the course of the year with a partnership initiative with St Anselm’s Roman Catholic Primary School in Southall and we have been privileged to join with them in partnership over the past few months.   Our Sixth Form launched a campaign for every child at St Anselm’s to receive Christmas presents from our pupils.  Appropriate gifts for the different age groups were selected, each present was individually wrapped and members of our staff delivered them.

Following this, we facilitated an opportunity for our Sixth Formers and staff to meet remotely one of St Anselm’s Year 6 classes.  In addition, our school caterers, Holroyd Howe, joined in with this Christmas initiative by providing food hampers which were distributed to some of St Anselm’s families and another of our parents very generously gave a donation.

This programme of partnership has touched the hearts of our community and more and more of us want to become involved.

2021 is bringing its own challenges and opportunities and at St Augustine’s Priory we seek to accompany each other and the wider community in all that we do.