£eith Decides

In December 2010 the School Association participated in an innovative new funding project called £eith Decides. Neighbourhood Partnerships were piloting the idea of letting local people decide on how community funding should be allocated by inviting groups to pitch their ideas at an open meeting followed by a vote.
We submitted two bids, one of which was for the Eco-Garden. I'd like to think it was the powerful speech or the worthy cause which grabbed the audience but I suspect it was the sight of a dozen adorable Hermitage Park children with giant paper daffodils and tulips and a Green Flag which was bigger than all of them put together that really won the day. That and the amazing support from everyone who came to listen and vote for us.
We left Leith Academy that afternoon £2,000 richer and one step closer to a garden and playground. The totaliser was suddenly tipping close to £7,000. Not quite Everest but well beyond the foothills.

Shaking the Money Tree

The newly formed School Association fundraising team started work in September 2010. The first step was to set a target. Privately most of us thought we'd be doing well to make £5,000 in our first year so in an act of madness we set a goal of £10,000. There was a collective raised eyebrow when we published the total in our first newsletter. In true Blue Peter fashion we included a totaliser which began at a very discouraging zero...getting to the top of the totaliser was going to be like scaling Everest but it's amazing how much confidence you can have when you don't know what you're letting yourself in for.
Throughout the Autumn we focussed on two main events: the revamped Christmas Fair and our first fundraising venture, a new school calendar. A group of parents worked together to design and photograph all the classes in the school for a seasonally themed 16 page calendar with useful dates and sponsorship from local businesses. The end result, in full colour, was absolutely brilliant and all the more impressive as the photographs were taken in one day. Getting the finished article to school in time for the Fair was far from easy though. Thanks to the worst snowfall in Scotland for decades the calendar was stranded at the printer half way up the M8.
In fact, after months of effort and planning, it was unclear if the Fair would happen at all as the roads were treacherous and school closure was threatened.
We needn't have worried. On the day, the mums, dads, grannies and grandads and friends of Hermitage Park showed up in their droves and helped us make more than £3,000. We were also blown away by the generous donations of baking, crafts and produce, books and raffle prizes. The school was buzzing and had never felt so unashamedly Christmassy.
Better late than never, the calendar arrived, thanks to the heroic efforts of the printer who drove boxes of them through the snow, just as the fair was closing. Sales in the following week were brisk and totalled over £1,000. To say we were pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. And as ever, the children were the stars of the show!

August: Back to School

December: Nursery Nativity

April: Easter Bunnies

October: Halloween

June: Sports Day

Green Shoots

Blank Canvas: Not a garden yet!

It seems like a long time ago now but the first stages of planning the garden and playground redevelopment began in early Autumn 2010. A spontaneous ground swell of support for the School Association combined with a long held feeling that the outside of Hermitage Park didn't reflect the fantastic atmosphere and ecological ethos of the inside lead to the conclusion that something needed to be done. Parents began by speaking to children from the infant classes (P1 - P3) to ask for their ideas on what the playground should look like. After discounting some of the more creative suggestions (a flat screen TV and a death slide among them) everyone agreed there needed to be plants to offset the sea of concrete and plenty of good quality equipment for the children to play on. They wanted to climb and jump and have adventures, sing and dance and play hide and seek. Without saying as much, the children demonstrated that they had bucket loads of imagination. We wanted to give them the pegs to hang their ideas on and an environment that would enhance their lives and allow their imaginations to flourish. 

So, we went away to find ideas for a garden and active play equipment. With the help of a dad with a camera (Aly) and a willing 5 year old volunteer (Harry) we conducted some preliminary research. A Saturday afternoon spent visiting local schools in and around Leith yielded some brilliant inspiration and opened our eyes to what was possible. Getting inspired turned out to be the easy part. We took our ideas back to the School Association and were bowled over by their enthusiastic response. Harnessing the enthusiasm was the next challenge and converting it into the means of making money to turn the dream into reality. Luckily for us, we turned out to have a team of committed, talented, tenacious and downright stroppy individuals who weren't about to let the matter of having no money get in our way.

Inspiration