Mayor visits Bristol Futures Academy

Students and staff at Bristol Futures Academy met the mayor, Marvin Reece when they took part in their regular voluntary work supporting local business Café Conscious with their social enterprise coffee mornings for people in the community.

Centre Lead of Bristol Futures Academy, Estella Nelson meets Marvin Reece when he visits children volunteering at a local business, Café Conscious.

The academy in Barton Hill is part of Snowdon Village, a ‘family’ of schools that sit within the Cabot Learning Federation and provide alternative provision for students who have been unsuccessful in mainstream education or have specific learning needs.

Alex Davies, the principal of Snowdon Village, says she is immensely proud of how the students have supported Café Conscious with their excellent work they are doing providing a supportive network for the local community.

The work the children do with Café Conscious has helped raise their confidence and develop their skills in leadership as well as giving them a taste of the world of work. Many of the children that have taken part in this intervention have been excluded from over 5 mainstream settings and feel a sense of social rejection. We work hard with our children and try to rebuild their confidence and give them a sense of belonging. One of our core values is ‘love’ and we talk about needing to care for our children and their families and making them feel cared for. This programme gives children an opportunity to care for others and experience the joy in caring for others. The additional benefits of this intervention is that it allows the children to meet and experience conversations with people from a variety of different cultures which helps to develop their oracy and builds on the feeling of ‘belonging’.

I’m looking forward to seeing how we develop our partnership further with other local community projects to share our resources and offer rich experiences for the talented children we work with.”