My group then had to find our own placement, this meant that we had to research different places which were in the area or around London and Kent as that was the distance we were willing to travel. We looked at a variety of types of placements for instance we looked at: Schools in general (Nursery, Primary and Secondary) then also specific schools for physical and learning disabilities, then care homes, hospices, charities, organisations and foundaions.
After all of us searching all day I sent an email to all of the places/people we found such as; Swiss cottage, Woodcote Primary School, Beyond Autism, Linkprim, Red Gates School, Garwood Foundation, Axcis Maggie's centre, Safe lives, Northease school, The Holmewood School of London and Insightsesc. The email read:
"To whom it may concern,
I'm a student at The BRIT School in Selhurst, and at this time of the year us as students are asked to be involved in a community based project.
I am one student from a group of lovely Year 12's who are supposed to be starting a project today with a special school for students with physical disabilities and complex needs, however unfortunately the school this morning have had to withdraw.
The aim for us 10 BRIT School students along with my teacher Claire Gildersleve, is to develop drawing-based workshops for people who need particular provision. Ideally we would visit the group of individuals we will be working with early on (next Tuesday or Friday would be ideal, but we could push it back a bit) and then we will spend some time back in our lessons generating ideas based on our experience of meeting our 'clients', and then in around the second week of July we will deliver the workshops to the people we have catered for.
Would there be any possibilities that we could run this project with your organiastion?
If you have any queries about our project and the logistics, please don't hesitate to contact me or my teacher at email: cgilders@brit.croydon.sch.uk. We will also make a courteous telephone call this afternoon to inquire further as to whether this could be a possibility.
Thank you for your time,
Kind regards,
Liberty Rose Cheverall
BRIT School Student."
We then got a few replies, one was from Penny East at Safelives, who said she would pass on the message to someone higher who would be able to make the decision, however we didn't hear anything past that, also from Claire Baldock who is the Deputy Headteacher from Woodcote Primary School, she seemed as though she would have loved to help, however their summer term was full of other events which meant that it wouldn't be possible. She was also an ex pupil from The BRIT School and said if anything else came up, that we should consider the school again. We then got another reply, this one was from Cheryl Moore who is the PA to Headteacher of Northease Manor School who said that she will pass on the message to the school's business manager (Michelle Hunt) however again we didn't hear back from them. Then we got a reply from Phoebe Campbell who is the PR Manager England and Wales for Maggie's centre, and she said she was thankful for us considering Maggie's however she didn't think it would be the right thing for the centre so she had to decline.
After these emails which were't very promising, we got an email from Melissa Hendry who is the Deputy Headteacher at Red Gates School which sounded encouraging. She was very interested and thought it sounded like a lovely thing for the school to be involved in and was very interested in meeting us and started right away. She briefly said her opinion on how she thinks it would work best, due to how the children's reactions towards a group of 10 students, that the students would find it better if we were split into smaller groups so that the children would co-operate with us best, and that we can spread throughout the department. She then gave us her phone number which we could contact but was also interested in meeting. We thought that the best idea was to actually meet in person with everyone and to know where we would be working.We then arranged for the ten of us to meet on Friday 10th June with both herself and also the art coordinator of the school.
After I had been in contact with Melissa Hendry, we also got an email from Victoria Bower who is an Art and DT teacher at The Holmewood School of London (THSL) where she seemed also interested in our project. However, with this response, she said that the group sizing was a little big and suggested a group of 3/4, this wouldn't have been quite the best placement as we was needing for us all 10 students to be part of the same placement. This meant that we had to decline her offer but said that we would consider THSL in the future for other projects.
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