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An inspirational concept drawing for the new garden

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

Concept drawing for the Fair Field school Big Idea

It’s been a few months since we decided that our replacement for the Fair Field school pool would be a garden but we haven’t been idle. Parent Lew Cohen – working with teacher (and leader of the school’s gardening club) Jacqueline Voyce and with pupils from every year at the school – has just delivered a really exciting concept drawing that lays out the options for the new Fair Field garden. It’s not final – we now need to come up with a detailed design and we’ll then need to raise funds to do the work – but it’s an inspiring outline of what we might achive.

Jacqueline has been careful to make sure that the garden can be used in classes and that every year at the school will be able to make use of it in the curriculum. The design is sustainable – lots of reuse and very little new building – and it should be possible to plant it in such a way that it can be looked after easily by pupils with some volunteer help. We’re also determined that the final design will be 100% accessible for all pupils and visitors.

So this is an exciting moment and we’re all very keen to get on so if you have specific skills: in garden design and fund raising specifically, we’d be thrilled to hear from you. Send me an email.

Click the picture for a bigger version. Some pictures of our most recent visit to the pool.

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The pool will become a garden

Saturday, October 23rd, 2010

I’m really thrilled to say that we’ve taken an important step towards replacing the old school pool with something useful and beautiful.

The Fair Field Big Idea Group met again yesterday morning. We set out the forty-odd ideas that have come in from children, parents, staff and governors since we started the exercise last year. We decided in advance that we’d like to involve Fair Field’s pupils in the process – they’ve already contributed the lion’s share of the ideas.

We whittled the list down to five by scoring the ideas – Strictly-style. Every one of them was really thoughtful and warranted serious thought (except maybe ‘a prison for teachers’) so this wasn’t easy. We then chose a single idea to develop. We considered several factors, including:

  • Educational value (will this idea make a contribution to the children’s achievement).
  • Sustainability (will we be able to keep this idea going year-to-year) and
  • Affordability (will we be able to raise the money to get it done).

The idea we settled on was actually a combination of several ideas on a similar theme so it’s a very broad one, which we’ll put under the heading: ‘garden’.

The next step is to decide what goes into our garden. We’ll see if we can incorporate elements of these green ideas from the big list: wildlife learning area, pond with fountain, oasis, kitchen garden with seating, wild food garden, fruit and veg garden with painting/art, multi-sensory area with climbing wall and… the big one… a biome. We’ll consider some of the science ideas too: you can obviously do a lot of science in a garden so it would be a pity to miss them out.

This is where the children come in: Mr Johnson and Miss Voyce (who runs the Fair Field gardening club) are going to recruit the school council and other pupils to help us get to a final design. For inspiration, we’ll take some of the children to interesting local gardens – Shenley Walled Garden or Butterfly World, for instance.

So the next step is a design that we can start to think about building. We’ll also need to start thinking about how to pay for the work. You might be able to help here. If you know about possible sources of funding for garden projects like this, do let us know.

  • And don’t forget that most of the great ideas we’ve been considering were submitted as competition entries. It’s going to be difficult to choose a winner but Mr Johnson will decide in due course.
  • Picture by Putneypics. Used under licence.

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Here’s a great (and very green) idea…

Thursday, June 24th, 2010
Turning Fair Field's pool into a mini Eden Project

Remember, we’re looking for clever and achievable suggestions for what to do with our sadly decommissioned swimming pool. We’re certain that we don’t want to leave it doing nothing in the middle of the school grounds and that we don’t want to fill it in and pave it over. Parents Nicolai Landschultz and Lewis Cohen have sent in a competition entry that’s brave, creative and eminently sustainable.

This is just the kind of thing we’re looking for. Play the presentation above for some quite mindblowing ideas that would bring a little bit of the Eden Project to Radlett (or download the Powerpoint presentation). And now, tell us what you think we should do with the pool! No idea is too small or too big. A practical idea or a crazy project: it doesn’t matter. Leave a comment here or drop your idea into the school office. We’re eager to hear from you!

Steve Bowbrick, chair of governors

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The competition

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

Our headteacher, Matt Johnson, has designed a competition to get Fair Field’s pupils involved in planning a new use for the old pool. Details went home in school bags (and via email to parents who’ve signed up, of course) a few days ago and the closing date for entries is Friday 18 June.

Click here to download details of how to enter (the comp’s only open to Fair Field pupils but if you’re not a pupil and you’ve got a good idea, add it as a comment below).

If you’re not already getting letters home by email, by the way, sign up on the school home page

Steve Bowbrick, Chair of Governors

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Our first proper meeting

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

A small group of parents and governors met at the school on 26th May to come up with some creative ideas for the use of our decommissioned swimming pool. Sketches were made, ideas exchanged and some of us visited the pool for inspiration. Governor (and parent) Andy Gardiner provided tracing paper which we overlaid on large photos of the pool. We then doodled our ideas for new uses onto the tracing paper.

Amongst the ideas we came up with: a theatre/amphitheatre, an outdoor science lab/lecture theatre, a skate park, a walled garden. We talked about: canopies and removable seating, a sloping grass bank, dressing rooms and temporary stages. It was all very inspiring and left us with the idea that doing something imaginative and useful with the pool is well within our capabilities. Matt Johnson (headteacher) gathered up all our ideas for the next stage of the process. I’ll publish some here on the blog at some point.

There are some more photos from the evening on Flickr. Leave a comment if you’ve got ideas or questions of your own of if you’d like to get involved.

Steve Bowbrick, Chair of Governors

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Help us come up with a really big idea

Monday, April 19th, 2010

Nearly fifty years ago, Fair Field school parents raised the money to build an open-air swimming pool in the grounds of the school. Remarkably, they went on to build it too! It was a thing of beauty and for generations of Fair Field children (the oldest of whom would now be in their fifties) the pool has been a Summer term treat and a really valuable learning resource. If they can swim now it’s got a lot to do with the enthusiasm and application of those 1960s parents.

Headteacher Matt Johnson explained why we’re closing the pool last month. In a letter home he wrote:

This is all about the swimming pool space. After much investigation and discussion, the Governors have concluded that our pool has reached the end of its useful life as a place to swim. In order to use it, the pool would need significant regular capital investment, in the order of tens of thousands of pounds. With modern standards, maintaining and running our own swimming pool is not sustainable with the budget we are allocated from the Local Authority.

In another letter, he also wrote about our ambitions for the old pool. We’d like to do something useful and creative with the space:

We have a unique opportunity to do something exciting and original with our much-loved pool. Our pool was built by this community. The community has a lot invested in it. Our opportunity, then, is to consider what we might do with our walled off pool space and the accompanying brick- built changing rooms. We do not want to fill in the pool and turf it over. There is no benefit in doing that as we are not short of either playground space or field. Instead, we would like to open it up to the community for ideas. Obviously, whatever ideas we get, the budget will remain a constraint. However, the most important financial consideration is not so much what our project might cost initially, but more that it does not cost too much year on year to maintain and run.

So please come to Fair Field on Wednesday 26 May at 7 p.m. for  a public meeting to talk about what to do next. Quoting Matt Johnson again:

…we will provide large photographs of the pool space, plenty of tracing paper, post-it notes, sheets of sketch paper, and large boards for you to pin your ideas to. We really want to encourage you to get involved, get thinking, and come along to share your thoughts on our future.

Steve Bowbrick, Chair of Governors

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