Colours and rhythm of Africa central to Peatmoor

Terri with lion cub on safari

Peatmoor Community Primary School headteacher Terri Peacock, right, and citizenship co-ordinator Donna Bloomfield, strengthened ties with Dihlabeng School in South Africa during a School Linking Visit funded by the British Council during the summer. Here she describes the trip which led to an Africa Art Week in July and a drum making and an Afrcian art summer school in August.

The children of Peatmoor School, together with Swindon Family Church raised over £1,000 through their Long Neck Appeal earlier in the year. This was used to purchase much needed educational resources for Dihlabeng, a township school, serving mainly deprived and disadvantaged children. The visit had a threefold purpose: leadership and management, creative arts and citizenship.

Following an eye-opening tour of Soweto we travelled to the mountainous region of Clarens. Faced with sub-zero temperatures and no heating we shivered our way through three days of exciting teaching, sharing new approaches to literacy and art, and had great fun teaching English country dancing to a school of born dancers.

The Dihlabeng children shared numerous cultural dances and songs, which culminated in a performance to their parents and members of the local community.

We applied our creative eye and well known abilities to shop and managed to purchase a fantastic range of art and craft resources for use back at Peatmoor, resulting in huge excess baggage.

The 10 day visit was rounded off with a short stay in a game park attempting to spot the 'Big Five'.

We were utterly overwhelmed by the children's passion for learning in South Africa and we returned eager to inject the same wide-eyed enthusiasm into the Peat-moor School ethos.


Dihlabeng School


A school full of natural dancers


Children who took part in the Peatmoor Africa summer school in front of their artwork and playing the drums made during the two weeks

Our 'Colours and Rhythms of Africa' week in July provided an excellent starting point and we plan a further visit for February 2003 to develop our links and the Africa summer school was a great success.