Beautiful learning spaces

Prior to 2014, there had been a school on this site for many, many, many years.

My sort of overriding memory of looking back was how dark it was. It was all on one level and all of the classrooms were quite small. It was sort of everybody's vision that we should have a really bright and open space as part of that is also the furniture that we use. And we experimented a few pieces and we wanted to see how they would work knowing that then when we came here, we would create a whole environment using that furniture and it has just worked amazingly well.

Think about the design of the building and how was the building going to provide the spaces that historically in our original school setting we certainly didn't have. So we had this amazing opportunity to say, how can we make the most of the building to enhance learning and to inspire learning as well? And part of that process led us to the Community Playthings furniture range, and that wasn't just by accident. It was definitely by design. As with everything that we've put into school, looking at the sustainable use of materials, looking at the life of the product and looking at the multifaceted use of a product and that's one of the unique features for the furniture, from Community Playthings.

They're not bespoke to certain key stages. It grows with the building and it grows with the children and it grows with curriculum. And it's not something that's static and only has one purpose use.

I think quite often children's furniture is usually in just the primary colours. It was just so calming. Walking into a classroom.

How the environment is set up really affects how the children act and how they behave. Having flexibility to be able to change the environment is a massive bonus, a lot of places you can't move furniture as easily, but the Community Playthings furniture is really easy to change and adapt to invite children in different and exciting ways.

So we don't usually leave it until the end of the year and just have one big change up every year. The spaces are changing, usually every half term. I love the way it all fits together, especially in creating those little nooks and crannies in the classroom. So you've got these amazing book corners that you can create. It's not all sharp corners and right angles. What's so great about the furniture is that it's built for little people and that's really, really useful because when children are accessing things, if it's built for them, that already steps ahead of anyone else using furniture in an adult world.

So we have fitted out the whole school with Community Playthings furniture from our preschool right through to our top year six classrooms, including all the display furniture, and we've also used it in some of our teaching spaces as well.

I think the children, probably in year three now are the ones that I first taught lots of people talk about them achieving different things and having a career and things like that. But I think the most important thing for me is that they're happy, and I know that when they're here they are. And I just want that to continue.