Estimated Price

£5,000

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Summary

Redhall School has a robust outdoor learning programme wherein the children have an opportunity to forage in the community and cook their own foraged food. To further develop this provision, we are looking to expand the usability of our garden area and involve both parents and the wider community in the life of our school through food-based events.

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Description

Redhall Grows would utilise the current garden space we have for growing food, cooking, and enjoying it together. We would implement raised beds, along with a polytunnel, to grow a variety of fruit and vegetables. Each of our nine classes would take an active role in the planting and tending to our food growing project. It would also become a key part of our outdoor learning sessions and Eco Group remit. At the moment, we are quite limited in funding for fresh fruits and vegetables for our children to try. The food grown in our garden project could become an incredible tool for our children’s communication. Most of our children are nonspeaking and utilise alternative types of communication. Their diets are also frequently quite limited. Trying new things and learning how to indicate what they like and don’t like would be an invaluable activity for our learners.

 

Further to the empowering benefits of our learners being able to grow food from seed and figure out what they do and don’t like, with an outdoor kitchen and pizza oven, the garden could be used to cooking sessions (life skills related to health and wellbeing are a large part of our curriculum).

 

To involve parents and the local community, we would aim to host a series of food-related engagements within the garden, such as a pizza night and a soup night. We would signpost this widely to draw in local community members into the life of our school.

 

We are currently working on achieving our Green Flag award with Eco Schools, and are hoping to create a more sustainable environment for our leaners and the wider community.