Manor Park Primary – Page 5 – Imagining Aberdeen

Using our imagination

Children from Tullos, Bramble Brae, Manor Park and Riverbank primary schools came together for the first time at Kaimhill Community together to start preparing for mural week. The 20 children are Imagineers, imagining Aberdeen as a happy, healthy and safe place for children to live. They talked about when they use their imagination and what they day dream about.

‘Watching tennis on the TV helps me imagine. I love Serena Williams and would like to play like her.’ Miriam, Manor Park Primary

‘We use our imagination when we are running and listening to music.’ Demi, Manor Park Primary and Lucy, Bramble Brae

‘When I am in my room I like to sit on my bed with my pets and write songs.’ Gabrielle, Riverbank Primary

When I close my eyes, ‘I imagine being in a jungle of instruments’. Demi, Tullos Primary.

Manor Park Primary School Report

Happiness Manifesto

After the recent elections, Imagineers from Manor Park and Bramble Brae schools create their own manifesto for a place where every child is happy.

Kindness, support + respect

Playing with your friends

Playing outside

To live in peace – at home and in the community

Feeling like you are wanted by someone

Pets to look after

Free from bullying

Choices in learning

Feeling like your opinion is important

Feeling like you have what you need

Toys + games

Going to the beach

Pocket money

A little treat, cake + some ice-cream

Watching TV

Parks

To do what they want to and still be safe

Comfort

Help from people when they need it

A lovely street with nice neighbours and sweet giving people

The Imagineer: Issue 1

A newsletter for children, families and the people of Aberdeen about the Imagining Aberdeen Project

Children’s Parliament is working with children from four Aberdeen City schools – Imagining Aberdeen as a place where children are healthy, happy, safe and doing their best at school.

So far 300 children have taken part in workshops at school where we have been thinking and talking together about some big ideas like human dignity. The children created an amazing new way to measure dignity – above is one their diagnometers.

In the next phase of the project 5 children from each of our 4 schools will work with artists and a film-maker to represent their vision for the city.

Taking part from Bramble Brae Primary School are Ben, Jamie, Lucy, Shannon S and Tijana.
Taking part from Riverbank Primary School are Gabrielle, Keira, Leo, Mikey and Ralfs.
Taking part from Manor Park Primary School are Abdullah, Demi, Dylan, Malachy and Miriam.
Taking part from Tullos Primary School are Katie, Demi, Sean-Paul, Aidan and Cody.

What’s next for our Imagineers?

The next part of the project with our team of 20 imagineers is taking place on the following days:

Wednesday, 18th May is TEAM DAY
We are getting the full team together for the first time! The 20 children will meet each other and the Children’s Parliament team of artists who will help them in their role as imagineers.

Monday 23rd to Friday 27th May is MURAL WEEK + DVD PROJECT
Over the course of this week, the children will create a large-scale mural that represents all of the ideas from the 300 children who took part in the school workshops. We are also making a short film to capture all the great ideas our imagineers have.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can contact Catrin or Colin on catrin@childrensparliament.org.uk and colin@childrensparliament.org.uk

The Imagining Aberdeen blog will be updated everyday during Mural Week with pictures and ideas from the participating children. You can get involved by leaving your own comments underneath the blog posts. It would be great to hear what you have to say!

You can follow Children’s Parliament on Twitter @creative_voices

Wanted

Bramble Brae and Manor Park Primary pupils came together to create a job description for an adult.

‘An adult should know:

how to work
how to drive a car
how to earn money

An adult should be good at:

keeping the house tidy
taking care of children
cooking and baking
playing basketball

An adult should teach children

fairly
carefully and shouldn’t hit, shout or swear
give them a second chance
with respect’

Dylan, Demi, Miriam, Malachy, Tijana, Jamie, Shannon, Ben and Lucy

Our Aberdeen

Exploring Aberdeen as a city with children from Manor Park School.

‘The best things about Aberdeen are the buildings – very awesome. The look of them is great. The parks too – you can spend time with your family at them. Duthie, Hazelhead and Seaton are the best because they have swings, diggers and big slides.’

Wiktor, Miriam, Kamila and Demi Ann P6A

‘The worst things about Aberdeen is the pollution because animals can die and drunk people in the street because they shout and threaten us, which is scary. They hurt police officers by ‘kicking off’. The best thing is having our friends here.’

Teigan, Reuben, John and Max P6A

My family portrait

All children have the right to a family that keeps them healthy, happy and safe.

‘Family is important because they wash your clothes so you are clean and don’t smell and because they look after you by giving you shelter, a warm bed and playing with you.’

Ellis, Kieran, Liam and Brandon P6A

‘A family needs transport, so you can travel on holiday. A family needs a TV because we sit together and watch it. We are also together when we go out places or to the cinema and when play Just Dance.’

Morgan, TJ and Aiden P6A

Where we live

Children should have a safe, healthy and happy community to live in.

“We love our friends, family and homes in the community. We like KFC as we like to eat there. People in our community are very disgusting because they don’t pick up dog poop. It is really annoying when people are drunk and they smash bottles and shout. In our community we like the park near Daniel’s house as it has so many good things to play on like see-saws and slides.”

Reo, Madison, Leah and Daniel P5 Manor Park PS

“The swimming pool and park are great because you can play with your friends. We don’t like the traffic because it is noisy and scares us. We would change the traffic by telling the council to make more roads so it doesn’t all go on one.”

Barty, Abdullah, Karis and Demi-Lee P5/6W Manor Park PS

What gets in the way

Sometimes things can get in the way of children being healthy, happy and safe at school.

“The teacher takes our P.E. off us when people aren’t listening in class. This gets in the way if us being happy and healthy at school. If our teacher took us on more school trips to museums people would like going there and would listen.

People disturbing us gets in the way of us doing our best work. We could get our own desks and this would help.”

Malachy, Erin, Kewin and Sophie-Lee

P6W Manor Park

Ideas for a school

Children should be free to learn in a happy, healthy and safe environment.

“One of the ideas for a school was to get more PSAs because when we are playing outside there is hardly any PSAs to look after us.”

Martha P6W

“My favourite part of today was when we had a lot of discussion on what makes a safe school.”

Macaulay P6W

“We imagined a school that the teachers would help us more and would listen.”

Chloe K P6W

“I imagine an amazing school where there is no bullying and we have fun.”

Chloe P P6W

“We’d do big maths [a game] to help us get the answers in the school we are imagining.”

Rebecca P6W

“I’d like a school where we did more P.E. to make us healthy.”

Miguel P6W