Our students enjoy discovering new interests and making friends for life, nurtured and encouraged within a community where kindness, inclusivity and innovation flourish.
Putney pupils are spirited, vibrant and learn to think for themselves, but they also know how to have fun, and most importantly, to really enjoy their time at school.
At Putney High School we believe that reaching out to the local community means doing more than just fundraising, volunteering and sharing spaces – it involves sharing a whole mind-set.
We actively engage with the wider community and with local schools to develop the sense of empathy, responsibility and togetherness that allows us to broaden our horizons, improve our environment and learn from one another.
Over 70 schools will be offered the opportunity to take part. Our students will involved in making the artwork itself, as well as supporting our partner schools with the project. Speaking about the opportunity, Mrs Longstaff has said:
“This is a fantastic opportunity for our young people in Wandsworth to work together and take increased ownership of their community role. The project very much reflects Putney High School’s “It Starts with Me” ethos and expands this to “It Starts with Us”. We’re seeing more and more how our students are actively wanting to find ways that they can make a tangible difference and our involvement in this project provides an opportunity to do just that.”
The artistic vision for the project has been developed by Alexander Mourant: ‘My project draws upon the metaphor ‘Different Boats in the Same Storm’ to highlight and reconsider the nature of home and the importance of our shared community. COVID-19 was a rapid, incoming tide, one which paradoxically brought with it intense moments of intimacy, and great swells of distance and isolation. As we came to terms with our separation—from family, friends and loved ones —I believe we began a path of individual and collective learning, examining what it is, truly, to be home.
A Place to Call Home, is a collective artwork, one which responds deeply to these ideas, and proposes that communal living can be expanded into a societal context: if a family lives in a house, then a community too, is a place where we all live—it’s a home within a home. We will work on a collective architecture, an artwork which is born through many parts, and is built, together, brick by brick. This architecture will take the form of a 2D house, or a “home”. I will provide each school with a pre-cut wooden panel (a section, or piece of the puzzle) which, when brought together with the remaining parts, forms the shape of a house. Our ‘home’ when experienced in its entirety, will encapsulate the collective experience and imaginings of children across Wandsworth. No matter their school status or demographic, their voices will be heard and woven into this artwork, representing variety, diversity and the social fabric of our community. They will create a place to call home.’
The Horizons project is the third iteration of the rolling two-year project which began in 2016-18 with Cool to be Clever and continued in 2018 with Cool to be Curious (2018 – 2020).
Academic staff at Putney and Roehampton work together to design a different practical or academic project for pupils to complete each term. It is aimed at ‘gifted and talented’ primary school pupils from Year 5 and follows them through two years of involvement until they reach the end of Year 6 and are beginning the transition to Senior School.
Putney High School’s Year 9 – 10 act as mentors to the younger children over the course of the two years, looking with them at topics from Philosophy, STEM and the Environment to Sports Science, Art and Music.
“The whole programme has given the children a chance to expand their horizons, try something new, work with other children and of course have fun! Thank you”
Sacred Heart Primary School, Wandsworth