End of term Instead of School exhibition

School provides a structure to the year with its terms and holidays - and celebrates the achievements of its young people with end of term events. But you can create your own structure without school. This year, in July, we decided to celebrate the young people’s creative work with an exhibition, a performance of a short play the teenagers had written and produced themselves and a sport’s day run by a Friday Club ‘graduate’.

We set up the exhibition in the Lower Barn with the title on a sign carved by two of the Friday Club kids - ‘ Instead of School’. The exhibition reflected the huge range of creative work that the kids do - both at the woods and in other parts of their lives - woodwork, embroidery, cushion covers, pottery, art work, creative writing and a 3D model of the woods by the second youngest member of Friday Club (Iris, age 6). We also launched a recording of 4 songs by Little Castanea - Pippa (15), Xandi (14) and Ruby (13). Emotional! We left the exhibition up for a week so visitors to the wood could come and be impressed at what people do instead of school!