Hello everyone and welcome to the new academic year! The Cheltenham Education Partnership 2024/25 Programme is well under way and our students have already participated in some fantastic opportunities since the beginning of term.
As is tradition, we kick off with a new year of Changemakers! In September, our students got together in their groups to plan the year’s missions. In January they will pitch their plans to our very own Cheltenham Borough Council in hopes of taking away a grant to fund their projects! We are also very excited to be taking work with CBC further as we begin the “Pollution Revolution!” – this project will see our schools measuring the air quality in their area, and together, forming an air quality map of Cheltenham as a whole. Next stop for our teams will be the Interterclimate Council session at the Municipal Offices in November, where all CEP schools will be present to debate current global climate challenges. Thank to Cheltenham Ladies College for being the home of Changemakers for another year.
After an incredibly successful 23/24, Young Poets returns with a new cohort! Working together with our facilitators, Emma and Cal, the new poets began work on their pieces, and the quality is already off the charts! A huge thanks to All Saints for hosting the first session and with a record 8 schools signed up, this programme will definitely be one to watch through the year.
Hot off the presses, Young Designers 24/25 has officially launched! Young Creative Journeys have proven popular so far and there were high hopes for this session – we were not disappointed! Led by the fabulous Katie Taylor, our new cohort of designers from seven different schools has begun work on their wearable art piece. There is a huge amount of work to be done before the show at the Wilson in June, but the students are keen and ready for the challenge. It was lovely to be at Balcarras School to kick this one off, and thank you to all of the teachers who have gotten stuck in to this project.
The Great Debate enters a new year with the topic of “The UK Fuel Crisis”. Six schools took part, and the areas up for debate included the Winter fuel allowance, nationalisation and green energy. This was a trial run for a new, more competitive format and on the back of this, we hope to add some additional debate dates in through the year. A huge thank you to Meg Brown and the team at Bournside for helping to made the debates what they are.
CEPXVOICEBOX came back for an incredible 4th year! Our fantastic relationship with Cheltenham Festivals has enabled us to have this afternoon takeover session at the Literature Festival year after year. This year was an absolute banger, with our Young Poets bringing down the tent in a ‘Poetry is Power’ session – joined by our very own facilitator and Bristol Slam Champion, Emma Taylor and the phenominal John Bernard, Musician and Coventry Poet Laureate. This was followed by another very special addition of Spill the Tea with Rizzle Kicks star Jordan Stephens. Our team of interviewers from All Saints, Balcarras and Dean Close left no stone unturned, grilling Jordan with hard hitting questions!
We have also seen successful starts for Civics Society at Pittville School and the Brush up your Shakespeare programme at Cheltenham College. The will be continuing into the new year, along with Creative writing and the exciting series of STEM events being offered by Cheltenham College. We also have a fully packed out lecture with Baroness Hale at Cheltenham Ladies College at the start of the month.
Finally, Last month was our first Annual Meeting to celebrate the 5th birthday of CEP! We welcomed our the Headteachers from our Steering Group, the CEP Champions working in schools and our fantastic partner organisations to celebrate the last 5 years and to look forward to what we have coming up.
November is set to be jam packed with the second workshop for all of our repeat programmes as well as a few special extras. Keep an eye on the Events page of the website for more details.