A look back at Bristol WORKS at Ashton Park School
Now the academic year is over, it’s nice to look back and reflect on the activities that Bristol WORKS has supported at our partner schools.
This year, in collaboration with Ashton Park School, we’ve been able to offer various activities that fit into our framework, from ‘Employer Visits’ to ‘Real Challenges’. Working with organisations from a range of sectors, year 7, 8 and 10 students have benefitted from meaningful interaction with various employers.
Engine Shed on Tour is an activity that sees students tour high-tech, innovative, creative, and digital organisations from around the city. Whilst there, they use state of the art, 360 degree cameras to record their tour and edit it on the boomsatsuma bus – a mobile editing suite. The result is an engaging VR careers resource for their peers.
Ashton Park’s first ESoT was to Engine Shed where they toured the facilities, interviewed various members of exciting start-ups and saw first hand what innovation looks like. The school’s second tour was to Extract Coffee Roasters, where they learnt about the art of roasting coffee in an environmentally friendly way. They also had a go at latte art and experienced first hand the various roles within the company.
STEMworks and EDF also delivered a Bristol WORKS session for year 8. The session saw students work with a STEMworks leader and EDF ambassadors to learn about apprenticeships and the safe transportation of nuclear waste as they designed, bought and built carriages to launch eggs across the school hall.
Year 10 also benefited from a series of assemblies to introduce the year group to various industries. These assemblies covered sectors such as media, sport, finance, cooking, hospitality and journalism with visits from Fiona Francombe of The Bottle Yard Studios, Chris Stenner of Bristol City Community Trust , John Hirst from Destination Bristol, Martin Booth from Bristol 24/7, The Square Food Foundation and more!
During the final weeks of term, Griffiths also visited the school, taking their bridge building activity and their tipper lorry to introduce the principles of engineering and health and safety to students.
It’s been great to work with Ashton Park School this year and we look forward to them remaining part of the Bristol WORKS network moving forward.