From 9th May until 11th July 2022 during the school term WAPPY successfully ran its popular Building Bridges project as an After School Club at West Acton Primary School. We had nineteen students registered and an average of fourteen students attended weekly sessions. In a nutshell, participants were encouraged to use team-building skills by working together on creative and construction projects by making bridges, towers and other objects out of paper, crafts and basic resources like spaghetti and marshmallows. From their working together to create and produce their construct(tions) they were then encouraged to develop visual and written narratives (i.e. poems, stories & artwork) for future presentations and publications. They also produced their own personal inspirational quotes which were transformed into cards and inscribed on their own T-Shirts.
The video below captures some wonderful highlights from the Building Bridges club and showcase but also includes some Quote Cards by some of the children who attend the workshops that are still running at Acton Library in the IT Suite.
WAPPY would like to thank Young Ealing Foundation for sponsoring our project, and to West Acton Primary school, in particular, Miss Karen Kondo, the Head Teacher, for enabling WAPPY to partner with her school to run our popular Building Bridges club. We are also grateful to other members of the staff team including, Mrs Carol Ives, Deputy Head Teacher & Designated Safeguarding Lead and to Miss Ciara McCracken for helping us to set up the PPT at the start of sessions!
A special thank you goes to John Durston, senior WAPPY Consultant & Trustee (& Grace's partner) and to volunteer staff, Rahwa Ghergish (regular attendee), Joan Jackson-Callen MBE and Carolyn Warner for supporting the sessions.
Our members were so thrilled to wear their T-Shirts & read their inspirational quotes from their personalised postcards, designed by Leanne Armstrong (aka Leanne creative.com); superbly designed to suit every individual child’s needs. 'Nuff' thanks too!
Thank you also to Andy Lian (Recognition Express) for producing our members’ stunning T-shirts at short notice with their quotes!
Finally, a big thanks must go to all the parents and carers who encouraged their children to take part in the sessions, and to each of the inspirational students in years 3, 4 & 5 for being part of Building Bridges!
We look forward to publishing the children's works in the near future once we have secured additional funding!
Cllr. Grace Quansah (aka 'Akuba') Director of WAPPY