School Projects
Safe Spaces.
Southport & Area Schools Worker Trust (SASW Trust) is a Christian charity dedicated to supporting young people in Southport through faith-based programs in primary and secondary schools. With over 25 years of impact, SASW Trust partners with schools, churches, and youth clubs, offering safe spaces for students to explore faith, mental health, and resilience.
Our programs include engaging assemblies, interactive workshops, and popular Christmas and Easter events that have the message of Jesus and offer hope. Through initiatives like lunchtime Safe Spaces in secondary schools, SASW Trust provides trusted, supportive environments where young people can grow in hope and purpose.
Creative Learning and Discovery Programme.
Chichester Cathedral is embarking on a three-year education project to rebuild its once-thriving department, which engaged over 10,000 individuals annually before the pandemic. Supported by passionate and experienced education volunteers, the project will be led by two new staff members who will work with teachers to design curriculum-based programmes aimed at enhancing school and family learning, with a focus on underserved schools and low-income families.
These programmes will provide enriching, unique experiences within this place of wonder, fostering critical thinking and personal development. By cultivating a sense of belonging and focusing on the wellbeing of children and young people, the Cathedral aims to inspire our youth, support teachers and families, and re-establish itself as a leader in education and outreach.
This project helps young people develop new, meaning-related tools which will build their understanding that there are ways of connecting themselves and all the uncertainty they live with about the world, with solid knowledge from science and faith communities.
Southwell Minster’s Time Travelling programme supports Religious Education teaching in Nottinghamshire. More than 1,500 primary school children visit the Minster each year to take part in pilgrimage days, where they learn about Christianity through lively workshops and creative activities. The programme is joyful and inclusive, focusing on the power of faith to transform lives.
There’s no better way to embed and deepen classroom RE learning than by taking part in workshops that bring faith and tradition to life. Southwell Minster is proud to work with teachers and schools across Nottinghamshire and beyond through the generous support of Westhill.
Since July 2022, the Project Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Community (UOAC) in collaboration with Anglican Christ Church Bexleyheath have created a vital lifeline for Ukrainians in South East London. This initiative offers humanitarian aid, wellbeing support, language classes, and crafts sessions to help community members integrate into the UK, whilst still preserving and practicing their cultural heritage. Additionally, the community has established a Ukrainian School.
The Faith Guiding Course is for those wishing to be trained to lead high-quality educational visits to places of worship. The Faith Encounter Programme has extensive knowledge of the faith sector and involvement with a wide range of faith-inspired organisations which has helped them to successfully engage collaboratively with diverse faith communities in Birmingham, the Midlands and further afield.
Their aims include offering customised courses in Faith Guiding to train Guides of all faiths to receive visitors with confidence and openness at their places of worship in the Midlands Region.
Wintershall Education uses the creative arts to bring the Christian story to life for children and young people, making connections between the Gospel stories and our world today. Themed workshops, run in beautiful outdoor settings, provide space and time to support the mental health and wellbeing of children and teachers and provide exciting and unique ways to access Religious Education.
Community and Schools Graffiti Project
The project will see a partnership between the church, three local primary schools and three different artists to create a new public art exhibition as part of the churches annual arts festival, but also leave an artistic legacy in one of the local primary schools. The project will see a mural painted as part of the churches work with that school, as well as a graffiti artist working with pupils in our three local primary schools to help them design, create and learn the skills to paint the work themselves.
Our current project is delivering sensory based workshops in local Special Educational Needs schools. The three workshops we are developing focus on God’s creation and the Christmas and Easter stories.
All the resources used are highly visual and include auditory learning aids as well as tactile objects. By taking volunteers from local churches into schools with us, we aim to give children an experience of Christianity as a lived faith.
Prayer Spaces in Schools
Off The Fence's Schools and Youth programme offers wrap-around support to over 500 young people across Brighton & Hove in 6 local schools. They offer 1-to-1 mentoring, Prayer Spaces, lunch clubs and Summer Schools to provide respite from troubled home lives and aid educational and social development.
Through the generous support of Westhill, their programme has developed further sensory-enriching faith-based education through light, sound and textures in their Prayer Spaces - ensuring each child feels fully supported through extracurricular sessions.
In 2023, Art Beyond Belief partnered with Oxford Diocesan Council for Interfaith Relations in an event focusing on shared faith approaches to climate change and responsibility for the planet. In advance of this event, we ran sessions in four schools for KS4 students, which was funded by Westhill Endowment.
During the programme students from several schools took part in discussion and creation of artworks, which were the focus of discussion at a combined event to which other students and schools were invited - creating a joint exploration of students’ perspectives on environment and responsibility.
CROSS weekly clubs consist of a range of fun team and individual games, along with discussions on relevant topics, thus enabling students to make friends and grown in confidence.
CROSS mentoring groups consist of a range of games and activities helping equip young people to understand and manage the challenges they are facing, thereby enhancing their mental wellbeing. We run groups on a range of issues including self-esteem, bereavement and anger-management.
We believe in the transformative power of these encounters to share the realities faced by people seeking sanctuary in order to break down barriers, to challenge stereotypes and misconceptions, and to change the narrative around the subject of forced migration and help to develop empathy and compassion.
With over five decades of global experience in conflict zones, CHIPS is dedicated to fostering peace and reconciliation. We empower communities to instigate enduring grassroots transformations for restored peace. Since 2014, we've been actively engaged in Brixton, UK, focusing on countering youth violence through constructive avenues for young people. Filmmaking has proven to be a powerful avenue for Brixton's youth, teaching teamwork, collaboration, unity through the art of storytelling.
In 2021-2022, our youth crafted the poignant short film, "That's How It Really Is," shedding light on subjects like young carers, self-harm, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and child molestation. With support from Westhill Endowment, we are able to orchestrate eight screening events nationwide, encouraging dialogue, support, and proactive engagement among young people. These screenings provide an opportunity for the youth involved in the film to shape, develop, and facilitate critical conversations on these complex subjects, ultimately offering a platform for vulnerable exploration of the contemporary youth experience.
We offer training to faith communities and external organisations, including schools, police and local authority. Supported by our own research into young people’s experiences of Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) in schools, we’re providing training for educators to equip them to shape and deliver faith literate RSE.
Thanks to Westhill Endowment’s generous grant, we will be developing a new relationships curriculum in primary schools. Our acclaimed Esteem programme has a significant impact in secondary schools, and following demand from both teachers and children, we are excited to be able to expand our work into primary schools.
We will pilot the new resources with 500 children in London in the first year, and then roll it out to 1000 children in the second year. We will train 108 primary school teachers to enable them to deliver the sessions confidently and effectively.
This project gives Luton pupils the chance to be artistic in RE about climate change and justice issues, informed by a multi-faith panel of speakers. Beginning with a conference in Nov 2022, 6-8 Luton secondary schools are leading the project and sharing creative RE ideas on green issues across the town. At the next stage, primary pupils will also be involved and there are plans for an exhibition of pupils’ green spiritual art in the town’s public gallery.
The Christian Education Project is based in the London Borough of Redbridge, with the aim of: “Serving schools; Inspiring Minds & Exploring Faith”. They provide a variety of free services to schools, including Prayer Spaces.
Prayer Spaces are set up in a hall or other large space where pupils and staff of all faiths and beliefs can come to consider and respond to the key questions of life. Pupils move in a carousel between a number of tactile, interactive bases set around different themes. Students are included in the planning stage, when possible, to help shape their school’s space.
Religious Education in many schools is not seen as a priority and some non-muslim parents feel concerned when it has anything to do with Islam. Using multi-faith storytelling, with professional award-winning Khayaal Theatre, we hope to build bridges in the primary schools and generate a better understanding of not just Islamic but of other faiths and cultures too, highlighting mutual links and crossover between all traditions. Means of storytelling does not confront orthodoxy of religion; it rather seeks to inform participants in a culturally acceptable manner.
Working with a wide range of stakeholders, this project seeks to develop teaching and learning resources to support and embed Religion, Values and Ethics (RVE) firmly within the Curriculum for Wales.
The project will offer strategy and leadership together with curriculum and pedagogical support to allow RVE to flourish as it takes on its new position within the Humanities Area of Learning, and support learners as they become religiously literate, ethical informed citizens ready to take their role within our multi-cultural, multi religious, multi secular world.
The Leicester Schools Peace Project is supporting the flourishing of our superdiverse city by creating a scheme of work for Peace Education from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 4. This project is in partnership with Leicester SACRE and will be part of the New Agreed Syllabus for Leicester.
By letting them know someone cares and encouraging them to reengage with their education, we are able to combat the devastating impact of COVID-19 lockdowns and the cost-of-living crisis on these already-disadvantaged children’s emotional and mental wellbeing.
Working with 60 schools across Bristol and the South West, we visit classrooms to deliver high-quality, interactive and engaging RE workshops. As qualified teachers we design professional resources for each lesson, to increase the engagement of pupils and inspire school staff in their own RE lesson planning.
Many of our primary workshops involve a craft element to consolidate the learning of pupils and to take home as a reminder of the Bible story they've heard.
Our puppets have been telling Bible stories now for over 20 years! We then go on to lead lessons and Godly Play, allowing the children the opportunity to think about world issues and the life they lead.
The students will interview their BM, asking how their worldview informs their professional lives and day-to-day activities and experiences. The students will create a range of visual resources to share understanding of the BMs and what they have learned through their direct interaction. In Spring 2023, a conference will bring together all the participants to share outcomes.
The RE Council’s RE Quality Mark is pleased to announce this new project 'REQM Sparklers'. Working with Westhill Endowment, we are compiling case studies of schools that benefited from grant support from Westhill between 2016 and 2019.
Interviews with teachers, pupils and students will be published here in 2022. During the remainder of 2021, we will be organising events bringing teachers together online, and in local areas where feasible, to celebrate the REQM and to share the ‘fizz’ with others! If your school was involved in achieving an award during this period we would love to hear from you…..
Stories of Hope and Home’s Enabling Encounter Project has two interdependent aspects. First, to create safe, welcoming and mutually supportive space for people with lived experience of seeking asylum to come together to build community and to explore and process their experiences. And second, to bring them together with others, facilitating encounters particularly with children and young people and those who work with them. Story-sharing and first-hand encounter have the power to transform understanding, to challenge stereotypes and misconceptions, and to develop empathy and compassion, which are the foundations for building relationships across diverse cultures and experiences.
A Son-et-Lumiere experience transforming the internal space of Worcester Cathedral.
Visitors to the event are immersed in the soundscapes they hear and walk through the light artworks that are all around them. On an explorative journey they can contemplate the contributions of science and human understanding of the physical world around us. The event offers reflection on the ways in which science and religion neither prove nor disprove the other; exploring how wisdom and beauty both serve to kindle our imaginations and enlarge our capacity for wonder.
Our Encountering Faiths & Beliefs workshops model interfaith dialogue and co-operation in action, whilst avoiding essentialisation through contextualising personal identity, faith and culture.