The new books are here! Exciting!

Today we launched 6 new volumes of stories co-produced by our pupils and our wonderful writers and illustrators.

Thank you to everyone involved in this project this year, so many wonderful memories and so much excellent work that has developed our pupils and raised awareness of such an important issue.

Enjoy these lovely pictures from the day!

St. Albert’s was shortlisted for a Scottish Education Award in Curriculum Innovation and today – we found out we were the winners!

The We Can be Heroes project was a key part of this award submission but the category reflects so many things that go on at St. Albert’s from innovative practice to offer support to children with PTSD and ASN to working with artists, film-makers and campaigners on current issues. We aim to provide a curriculum that reflects the real world that our pupils live in as well as responding to their particular experience of it in terms of their cultural heritage, their home life and our geographic location in Pollokshields, Glasgow. We are so proud of our school, so proud of our pupils and so delighted to have all this work recognised in this way.

Read all about it in the Daily Record article here:

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/we-can-heroes-glasgow-school-26243690

As part of the work funded by the Scottish Library and Information Council, St. Albert’s has worked in partnership with the Barrowland Ballet to produce a music and movement interpretation of our stories. This partnership element has been a real joy for parents, pupils and staff alike.

You can watch the performance here:

https://vimeo.com/718908850  – password: home

Enjoy these photos of the pupils and arts professionals working together here.

The St. Albert’s Social Enterprise crew did an amazing job today! We didn’t win this year but the judges were so impressed with the team’s confidence and knowledge of our business, its aims and how important it is for them and children like them. Well done all!

What an amazing day we had on Friday 25th. Writers, illustrators, pupils and parents were all collaborating together on the Phase 2 stories so far!

6 fab new adventures are coming together for our readers: one set in India, one with a delicious recipe to follow, one showing how video gaming can help the world! Live sketching was happening and one of our illustrators was even participating via Zoom from Wales! We also welcomed Ian Lebeter from Glasgow Libraries who is our project liaison with the School Library Improvement Fund; Rosemary Ward, Director of Programme at the Scottish Book Trust and three Educational Psychology students who are evaluating our project as part of their studies at the University of Glasgow.

Stories will be drafted in full this month and illustrations perfected during April and May. Momentum is gathering and we can’t wait for the Book Launch in June (although there’s a lot of work to do before then!!)

We were all so excited on Wednesday to see ourselves on BBC Scotland!

Phase 2 is well underway!

All initial writing workshops are complete and six stories are being drafted by our authors from the brilliant ideas our families came up with. From Agra’s Taj Mahal to a delicious Lebenese dessert, there is so much colour and detail helping our stories to jump off the page!

On Friday 25th February, we will be meeting as a whole project team to link up our writing teams with illustrators and start the sketching process! The pupils involved are so excited to meet the people who will bring their characters to life in pictures.

Our three writers came to St. Albert’s once again last week to run three workshops kicking off Phase 2 of our writing project.

We are working with our pupils’ parents this time (and their children!) to draw out some of the folklore and cultural themes that they feel are lacking in books available for their children.

During the workshops, we talked about the partition of India and Pakistan, relatives who lived in front of the Taj Mahal, the challenges of marriage and family dynamics, immigration, depictions of beauty and female paradigms in fairytales. Such a rich discussion and so much content to explore for the stories that will be written in this Phase!

Thank you to all involved.