Downe House was delighted to celebrate Race Equality Week by welcoming local primary schools from, St Mark’s Church of England School and St Finians Primary from Cold Ash.
The primary school children celebrated with our Lower School pupils and got to enjoy workshops from our guest, Reverend Polly Falconer. Polly spoke on black inventors and the history of Calypso before it was time for everyone to get on their feet and have a go at Calypso dancing! The workshops were noted to be both “powerful and utterly delightful” from our own Chaplain, Reverend Anthea Platt.
Reverend Polly, who was ordained as a priest in 2021, boasts an impressive career as the Racial Justice Adviser for the Oxford diocese. Her background is in social justice and Polly has won Radio Academy Awards for projects with the BBC on social justice issues including Handle With Care a project on ‘looked after children’ and Warning, May Contain Nuts. We count ourselves very lucky to have had her preach at the Lower School chapel service.
We also celebrated Race Equality Week in our Senior chapel service. Pupils confidently shared prayers in different languages and we were joined by Mr Breeze (Teacher of Chinese, Head of Electives) who spoke about celebrating Chinese new year, known as the Lunar New Year.
We would like to extend our gratitude to everyone who contributed to the week’s celebrations.
