2 - The Garden Classroom

THE GARDEN
CLASSROOM
Annual Report
June 2013
As The Garden Classroom approaches its fifth birthday it can be confident of having
established a reputation for the high quality, the educational value and the imaginative
content of its work. Building on this basis, it has been able to undertake a steady expansion
of its area of operation, from its original location in the east of Islington to the current total
of six sites, with a further one in development.
This growth in sites, together with the consolidation
of existing ones, has been the main feature of our
work over the past year. Alongside a full programme
at our established bases at King Henry’s Walk, Gillespie
Park and Whittington Park, The Garden Classroom has
now begun to deliver sessions from an exciting new
canal-side site at the Graham Street Park – a venue
that provides not only a new site but also a new
habitat type to work with. In addition to these
locations, all of which are in Islington, we have for the
second year a programme in Clissold Park in Hackney,
including the delivery of over thirty workshops as part
of World Book Week. At the time of writing, sessions
are beginning at another new centre, the CAPE Play
and Youth Project, adjacent to the new Ashmount
School site above the Crouch Hill railway cutting.
▲
▲
1
THE GARDEN
CLASSROOM
Annual Report
June 2013
‘‘
Huge congratulations to The Garden Classroom
on its forthcoming fifth birthday. That’s five years of
delivering consistently high quality outdoor sessions to
inner city children who respond so positively to
learning about the natural world around them. 2012 was
by far the worst gardening year I’ve ever experienced
so to stand still would have been an achievement.
TGC has done better than this by growing and
expanding to 6 sites which is remarkable and proves
the increasing appetite for this kind of learning.
‘‘
Joe Swift
▲
▲
Developed in partnership with Islington Schools and
Young Peoples Services it will use a stretch of the
Parkland Walk, London’s longest nature reserve, to
deliver outdoor education in a variety of forms to
local young people. Further to the south, discussions
are underway with the Calthorpe Project in the Kings
Cross area of Camden, where we are hoping to deliver
a programme in 2014.
the process, therefore, we have taken care to have
regard to two main principles; to ensure that the
development of new opportunities does not threaten
the quality of existing work, and to continue to honour our stated aim of focussing our services in areas
of highest deprivation.
Over the course of our five years the increase in
sites has been matched by a growth in the number
of organisations we work with. Starting with one
school in 2008, we have developed in 2013, into a
partnership with more than 40. In the last calendar
year our projects provided just over 6,100 places
for children and a further 300 for adults. We are
particularly proud that despite the atrocious weather
that marked – or marred- last summer, only a dozen
of our sessions were postponed or cancelled. Science
topics provided the highest number of bookings, followed by numeracy, literacy/drama and food growing. Our imaginative approaches to delivering these
subjects through outdoor education included ‘Wood
Beyond these areas, TGC was involved in the stakeholder discussion group, hosted by Natural England,
which looked at outdoor education on the Olympic
site (soon to become the Queen Elizabeth II Park)
and its surrounding areas. Our joint bid with the
Field Studies Council, to research current provision
and provide a consultation report, was not successful – being won by Groundwork - but this area will
undoubtedly provide new opportunities in the future.
Overall, this amount of growth in a small organisation has to be handled both cautiously and with
care in order to ensure its sustainability. Throughout
▲
▲
2
THE GARDEN
CLASSROOM
Annual Report
June 2013
▲
▲
Wizards’, the ‘Wonderful World of Water’ and, for
the third year in succession, our ‘Wonderful World of
Bees’ project. World Book Week was another important strand with the number of workshops delivered
in this area doubling in 2012.
We are grateful to Bloomsbury Books for providing
us with 300 free copies of ‘Alfie’s Shop’ by Shirley Hughes and to Michael Rosen and Walker Books
for allowing us to use sections of Michael Rosen’s
book, ‘We’re All Going on a Bear Hunt’. Both of these
formed the basis of workshop sessions.
The school year 2012/13 also marked the final year
of our Global Growers programme funded by Local Food Lottery involving a further eight schools.
As well as lessons, workshops and growing
sessions, pupils took part in waste
audits, the design of a fair trade
campaign, interviews with local
businesses and the creation of a
herb garden in palettes. Each
school also received a ‘starter
pack’ of growing materials including seeds and tools.
All 24 teachers on the project received training
and resources and over 50 parents attended coffee mornings and ‘grow your own’ training. This very
significant project, which represented our single
largest block of grant funding to date, received very
positive feedback and has provided a permanent
educational resource in the form of lesson plans and
resources. The ‘Plot to Pizza’ project was an outgrowth of this programme, as was the commission
from Islington Council to install five of the outdoor
wood fired ovens designed by Jamie Oliver, on five
Adventure Playground sites, and to run associated
food growing workshops with after school groups.
Projects with special schools remained an
important component of our work,
including sessions both with young
people with learning difficulties and
those with physical disabilities. In
particular, our close relationship with Samuel Rhodes
▲
▲
THE GARDEN
CLASSROOM
Annual Report
June 2013
▲
▲
School continues with our WJEC accredited course in
Land Maintenance and Plant Care. We received some
remarkable stories of the impact of this work on the
young people who participated.
CPD training for teachers is another important area
of work and as well as this forming an element of
our Global Growers programme, we again delivered a
number of training days in partnership with the Royal
Horticultural Society with more planned for the next
academic year. A significant development planned for
the coming year is the establishment of a Teachers
Forum. Six schools have indicated their willingness to
take part in this advisory group that will help shape
future delivery and ensure that it best meets the
needs of our growing family of participating schools.
Though a smaller area of our work, we once again
delivered a very varied programme of adult workshops and activities from the King Henry’s Walk site.
This included sessions on such topics as salad growing, the folklore of plants, ice cream making, herbs,
botanical illustration, foraging for wild food, Indian
vegetarian cooking and pond dipping for families. We
plan to extend this programme to additional sites in
the future.
Hall. Our Global Growers project was also a finalist
in the National Climate Change Awards, held in the
House of Commons earlier this year.
A great deal of work behind the scenes goes on to
support this level of delivery and we are grateful for
the considerable and continued efforts of our staff,
volunteers and Board. 2012 saw the implementation of our sustainable financial strategy, including an
increase in the level of charges to schools. Although
this led, as expected, to an initial drop-off in bookings it was followed by a subsequent recovery in
numbers and constitutes an important step in ensuring the organisation is able to pay for a greater
proportion of its core costs. In the course of the year
we also appointed Joanne Coates as our new Treasurer and in just a short time she has made significant improvements to our accounting and budgetary
procedures. We are very grateful to her for this work.
We have also continued to improve our ways of
working with staff and volunteers and an important
part of this has been the organisation of regular staff
gatherings. This is very much part of the ethos of
Once again the efforts over the past year have been
recognised with a number of awards. These included
the Learning Outside the Classroom ‘National Innovator Award’ from The Council for Learning Outside the
Classroom and the Tree Council/LEAF ‘Learning and
Education Award’, presented at a ceremony at City
▲
▲
4
THE GARDEN
CLASSROOM
Annual Report
June 2013
▲
▲
TGC and particularly important for staff who mostly
work remotely. Our regular termly gatherings are now
supplemented by an annual Celebration Evening to
which we also invite our users, partners and funders.
We were very pleased that both our patrons, Joe
Swift and Dallas Campbell, as well as Councillor Barry
Edwards, the Deputy Mayor of Islington, were able to
attend this event. Although he was not able to attend in person, the Mayor of Islington, Councillor Jilani
Chowdury, did pay a visit to our work in 2012 and
this marks his third visit overall to TGC.
in September. Leaving her Project Manager position
on Global Growers at the end of August will be Rohan
Knox. Rohan has previously worked as our Sustainable
Schools Officer and in a number of other capacities
and played a crucial role in the early development
of the organisation. Rohan is now taking up teacher
training but will continue to sit on our Board. We
are very grateful for all she has contributed to the
organisation over the last five years and wish her the
very best in this new stage of her career.
As well as our staff, our volunteers play a vital part
in the life of the organisation. In addition to our task
force of ‘Pizza Oven wardens’ we would like to
thank regular volunteers Connie Blackett-Ord, Natalie
Tibble, Sherean Marasigan, Mauro De Giorgi, Susan
Whitehead, Katie Harrison, Jenny Isidore, David Solomon, Rachel Frances, Rebecca Cotton and Frances
Steele. Without the valuable contribution of all of
these it would be impossible for us to deliver much
of the programme outlined in this report. Special
In the course of the year we said goodbye to our
highly valued member of staff, Amy Stone (nee Solomons), who developed and delivered our excellent
science programme across 2012. We wish Amy the
very best for the future. We also extend our thanks
to Sarah Bentley who delivered the accredited course
to pupils of Samuel Rhodes School - our second
project with the school. We look forward to working with Sarah and Samuel Rhodes on a new project
▲
▲
5
THE GARDEN
CLASSROOM
Annual Report
June 2013
▲
▲
APPENDIX I: Partner Organisations in 2012
Cambridge Education @ Islington
Field Studies Council
King Henry’s Walk Garden
Learning Outside the Classroom
London Borough of Islington
London Borough of Hackney
The Royal Horticultural Society
Samuel Rhodes School
Richard Cloudesley School
APPENDIX II: Funding Organisations in 2012
Charles S French Charitable Trust
City Bridge Trust
Ernest Cook Trust
Islington Community Chest
Islington Strategic Partnership
Local Food Lottery
London Borough of Islington (Local Initiatives Fund)
Wax Chandlers Guild (William Kendall Charity)
Big Lottery: Awards for All
mention must also go to our invaluable Chief Executive, Marnie Rose, whose energy and untiring efforts
drive the whole organisation. We are particularly
proud of Marnie’s success in winning, against national
competition, one of the coveted places as a ‘Lloyd’s
Social Entrepreneur’ which, among other things,
entitles her to both free ‘Scale Up’ training, and a
personal mentor, provided by Lloyds Bank.
In addition, the Global Glowers project funded by
Local Food Lottery which concludes in the summer
of 2013, has the following schools and organisations
to add that TGC has worked with over the two year
period from 2011 to 2013:
Membership of the Board has remained stable across
the past year, with the addition of Joanne Coates, as
mentioned above. I would particularly like to thank
Rosey Lyall, for co-ordinating our Volunteer
Programme and for her work in quality assurance in
our educational sessions, Peter Carne for developing
our Business Plan, improving our budgets and
simplifying our approach to core costs, and Stuart
Roweth for his work as our lead on health and safety
– as well as for volunteering as a Pizza Oven Warden!
Thanks must also go to our two patrons Joe Swift
and Dallas Campbell for their continuing support for
the organisation.
The Global Growers Primary schools were:
Ambler; Canonbury; Highbury Quadrant; Newington
Green; Rotherfield; St. Joan of Arc; Yerbury;
SMM Academy; St. Jude and St. Paul’s; New North
Academy; Ashmount; Christ the King; Duncombe;
Drayton Park; Hanover.
Other local businesses, organisations and projects:
Master Gardener Islington; Bird café; Healthy Schools
Islington; London Borough of Islington; Food strategy
steering group; Growing Life; Ian bailey Bee Keeping;
Fair Trade Islington; Stoke Newington Farmers Market;
RHS; Link Community Development; Newington Green
Grocers ; Mother Earth; Islik Turkish bakers; Capital
Growth; Commonwork Farm; Field Studies Council;
London Sustainable Schools Forum; Chelsea Physic
Garden; Action Aid.
This is my last Annual Report after three years as
Chair. I leave The Garden Classroom at the end of
2013 confident that it will continue, over the
coming years, as it has over the past five, to deliver
its much-needed and ever-growing programme,
giving inner city children, young people and adults,
experiences in growing, in outdoor education and in
caring for our environment.
Bob Gilbert, June 2013
6