Erin:“ Stocks Green is a primary school in the small village of Hildenborough. It ' s an absolutely lovely community.” |
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The last time I counted, we had 13 members on our PTA, plus a great group of parent volunteers. I follow lots of different PTA Facebook groups and many struggle to get people to join their PTA, but we ' re really lucky. |
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I think a big part of that is because we have a great group of teachers and headteacher, Mr Hipkiss. The PTA can ' t make the school culture, but we can build on the solid foundations they’ ve created. |
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When we talk about our PTA to parents new to the school, we let them know that every parent is technically a part of the PTA. We ' ve got a constitution that says PTA members can only be involved for three years and then they have to take a year off. After that, they can come back if they want. It keeps people engaged and doesn’ t allow things to get too cliquey. Also, if people stay on for too long, everyone starts to rely on them.
Ken:“ I had the idea for Stocksfest eight years ago, way before I worked at the school.”
I ' ve always thought, with the facilities and the grounds they ' ve got at the school, why don’ t they do something with it? My children went to the school, my wife used to run the preschool, and I became the Site Manager a couple of years ago, so I’ ve got a strong connection to Stocks Green. I ' ve also played in bands all my life, so I ' ve got that connection to music as well. When I pitched Stocksfest to Mr Hipkiss, he thought it was a great idea.
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Erin: We ' d had a successful fundraising year the year before, so we had a pretty healthy bank account. We figured we were in a good position to take a chance on a music festival.
Erin:“ Ken and I came together with PTA members Nancy, Sally and Susie to think about how a music festival would work.”
We did so many site walks to see what would go where. We used that spray paint that disappears with wet weather to plot things out. We even made a detailed music festival-style map.
We knew it was going to be an event of two halves because we wanted the fair and festival vibe to go from one o’ clock until five-ish, and then the stall holders would leave for music and drink until nine o’ clock.
We had to figure out how trucks were going to come through the middle of the school and not run over children, and all that kind of
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scary stuff! It was a lot. And having never done it before, it felt exciting and overwhelming all at the same time.
Erin:“ We decided if we broke even and learned a lot, it would be worth it.”
I created the project plan, but we had project leads in charge of different parts of the festival – shout out to Lauren who was the lead for the toy stall, Rachel for the food vans, Joss and Katie for the bar and James the food!
I left them to be creative with that, but said I was available for questions and to check in if they needed me to. I think it ' s important to find that right balance between giving people ownership and not being controlling about stuff, but also people can get overwhelmed if they don ' t know where to start.
Every project head took what they were in charge of and really ran with it, it was fantastic.
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Photography: Gemma Jane Photography |