How are specialist schools celebrating Pride Month?
June is a busy month for our schools. As the weather gets nicer there are more and more opportunities to have fun and mark events in style. The arrival of Pride Month sparked organisation wide celebrations in our educational settings. Take a look at some of the ways we celebrated Pride Month:
Ashcroft School Pride celebrations
At the heart of Ashcroft, there is a family. A family not separated by differences, but united with the pride of being different. By acknowledging and celebrating pride, Ashcroft school sends a powerful message that diversity is valued, discrimination is not tolerated and that everyone deserves to be treated with respect and dignity.
Firstly, students and staff kicked off the celebrations by getting bold and colourful with face paint and multicoloured temporary tattoos. On the day students were able to ask questions during a Q&A session where staff created a safe space for discussion. Guidance, advice and stories were shared from both staff and students who were either part of the LGBTQ+ community or allies.
Afterwards, a range of activities were scheduled for the students to be involved in such as pin the tail to the donkey, piñatas and much more. Finally, the day ended with sharing the love of good food… pizza!
Inscape House School Pride Parade
In a vibrant display of unity and celebration, the spirited students of Inscape House School came together to take part in a joyous student pride parade!
Adorned with glitter, face paint, colorful clothes and decoration, they took the streets of our campus to celebrate LGBTQ+ month!
Each class participated as their own entry and decided what to campaign for - they chose messages close to their heart and made their own banners. Staff came over to watch the parade and cheer for our young campaigners.
LGBT Youth Summit
Six students from Inscape House School took part in the Proud Trust LGBT+ Youth Summit in Manchester. Alongside 400 other young people they listened to educational panels discussing current LGBT+ issues and asked questions during the sessions.
They then took part in various activities including sharing views about what it is like to be an LGBT+ young person in the UK today, completing a survey to inform the creation of a Trans inclusion toolkit for Greater Manchester schools, and discussing how schools could become more inclusive in the future. The day ended with a banner workshop followed by a mini protest march.
Proud Trust Workshops
Students at Inscape got a visit from the team at Proud Trust delivering a range of workshops for our young people.
During the interactive workshops, we talked about same-gender relationships and highlighted appropriate language and terminology to describe a range of LGBT+ identities. Students were encouraged to acknowledge and discuss the existence of LGBTphobia, what it looks like in young people’s world and affirm the responsibility of everyone to recognise and challenge LGBTphobic language and behaviour, as well as actively creating safe and inclusive spaces.
One of the sessions also included an interactive reading of the book Alien Nation, which introduced words such as “cis”, “trans” or “nonbinary” in a fun and accessible way.
