Thank you so much for taking the time to share with us what you have been up to with prayer spaces in schools. How long have you been doing prayer spaces in schools? 

BeSpace is a Christian charity based in Oxfordshire that equips local churches to facilitate prayer and reflective spaces in schools and other areas of the community. This work began in 2010 and in that time 160 different schools have had a prayer space. Rosy has been working with BeSpace for just over 2 years and Harriet joined at the beginning of September. For this Autumn term we currently have 17 spaces booked in.

So, how many schools do you now serve and do your spaces look the same from school to school? And what about team, it can’t be just one person, surely? 

We average around 20 spaces each term, some of these spaces are entirely run by the local church or by the schools themselves and they may just need to borrow our kit. Others we have a lot more involvement in including setting up and packing down, leading, or helping with the sessions, organising the activities and/or theme and putting all the paperwork together.   

Our aim is to get each school set up with a local church who will eventually be able to run and organise the prayer spaces themselves without needing much input from us. 

The spaces vary in length of time depending on the size of the schools, most don’t need longer than a week in order to schedule in a session for each class and some smaller schools may only need one or two days. Within each day the schools usually schedule in 4-5 sessions of 45 minutes each where each class is split into two groups so that each activity has 3-4 children at a time, this gives each child the time to explore all the activities.  

With regard to the number of people needed to run the space, you ideally need one leader (who will explain to the children what prayer and reflection is all about, and time keep), and then a volunteer for each activity.  Most spaces have 4 different activities, so you need 4-5 people per session.  This can sometimes be the hardest element – finding enough volunteers!  

How do you decide what theme/prayer activities to take into a school, do you only do specific themed spaces?

We have a range of different themes and activities listed on our website which we will direct the schools and churches to for them to decide which one will suit their school the best. Sometimes the schools will ask us to put together activities to link with the schools’ values or the teaching they are currently looking at within the school and other times they are happy to leave it up to us to put the activities and themes together for the prayer space. 

Now, Christmas is coming, and I know you do some amazing ’Narnia’ themed prayer spaces which you have kindly shared the prayer activities with us before (they are already in our resources library!) Can you tell us about those spaces?

I love the Narnia spaces!  And so do the children, staff at school and all the volunteers!  I have run many that are within churches, and it is amazing when they walk through the wardrobe of coats (usually set up in the entrance of the church) and into the winter wonderland of Narnia!  The “wows” and gasps from the children are so moving!  Usually, everything is covered in white, and we have some beautiful snow scenes that are put up around the space too.  We have lots of extra kit for Narnia, which was very kindly donated to us by Christ Church Abingdon and so we are able to have ‘Mr Tumnus’ room’, the lamp and lots of other links to the story.  The great thing is that even if the children have never read the book (or seen the movie), they simply love coming into the magical land of Narnia!

What is your favourite memory/story from a prayer space in school

My favourite story so far is when a child came into the prayer space feeling quite negative about it and saying they didn’t know why they were there and then shortly after taking part in the space asked why the pray space was only once a year because it was wonderful!

Hearing from the children at the end of their session is always so lovely.  Most say how calm and peaceful they are, that they feel lighter or closer to God.  These are what reaffirms that what BeSpace offer, is so important and needed for the children.

If someone is thinking about getting started with a prayer space in school, what would your top tips be?

Give yourself plenty of time to prepare and organise the space, start asking for volunteers as soon as you have a date in place, so you are able to provide a more seamless experience for the children. And feel free to ask us any questions along the way.