It’s been our busiest half-term of the year with visiting schools, with a total of six weekly sessions taking place. This has included two AllChild programmes, with St Augustine’s CE High School and Pimlico Academy, a new cohort from Haringey Learning Partnership and a rolling enrichment programme for Year 8 students at local Oasis Academy Southbank. We were also pleased to loan Oasis Academy Southbank the farm for their Year 11 celebration afternoon in June.
It has been a joy to welcome all Year 6 pupils from another local Oasis school, Oasis Johanna Academy this term. We’ve used the farm as a space to engage the Year 6 students in anticipating what the move to secondary school might be like. Their openness, wisdom and sense of fun has been hugely appreciated on Monday afternoons!
We’ve been delighted to run a follow-up programme for the Charter School North Dulwich students who attended Hereford earlier this year. Over six weeks in Waterloo these 12 young people have been able to demonstrate the farming skills they developed on their residential visit much closer to home. They’ve also been able to reconnect to the pledges they made in Hereford over personal changes they’d like to see going forward.
Alongside farming jobs, school groups have been helping make decorations for our 10 Year Anniversary event which took place on the 3rd July.
June was incredibly busy with events on the farm – both public events, such as Handlebards bringing their bicycle-powered version of The Comedy of Errors to Waterloo or our participation in Open Garden Squares, alongside the income generating events that help finance much of what we do. This month this has included weddings, a barrister’s “silk” party and corporate events. Huge thanks to our events team who help deliver an experience for hiring customers, whilst making sure the farm is ready to go for school groups the next day.
We were really pleased to host Peer Productions’ show “The Story of Us” in the barn in late June, funded by Arts Council England. In this new devised show, a small team of actors with learning difficulties shared their story of ambition, hope and friendship with a packed audience.
We welcomed three new lambs to the farm, all born at Jamie’s Farm Bath in April, who are already a big hit with our visiting schools.
We offered the farm for nurses from St Thomas’ Hospital to use for a morning in June, to have time to reflect together as a team away from their hectic and demanding roles. The thank you email we received reminded us how so many people – not just young people – can benefit from time in green spaces, around plants and animals, with time to pause and reflect:
“I just wanted to say a huge thank you for having us last Thursday. Your beautiful farm was so perfect for the morning of our away day, it honestly couldn’t have been better. It was so special to be able to get the team together and do some team building and reflective exercises away from the hospital – they all adored the farm and your animals. It made for quite a memorable and unique day and was a breath of fresh air for us literally and metaphorically!”
