Before Christmas Tim met with Frances from Brentwood and heard all about what they have been up to with prayer spaces in schools. With spring in the air now seems like to perfect time to think about outdoor prayer spaces and share what Frances has been doing with you all!

Frances, please tell us a little about you, the organisation your work for and how prayer spaces fit into your work with local schools.

BSCWT has been working in the primary and secondary schools of Brentwood, Essex for over 30 years.  Our main core activities are: assemblies, clubs, pupil support, prayer spaces and lessons.  Many of our projects have taken a Prayer Space format but these have been inside. 

What is the Curiosity Trail?

It is a brand new initiative that I piloted in a community primary school in Summer 2023 and have just completed a 2^nd Curiosity Trail with different themes in Autumn 2023.

It takes the Prayer Space concept but puts it outside where you can get many additional benefits (on top of the general benefits of a Prayer Space) that appeal to a school such as:

• Fresh air and physicality being good for a child’s holistic health
• Enhancing pupils’ experience of, and interaction with the school grounds.
• Enable pupils who sometimes feel at a loss at playtimes to be provided with something different to participate in.

The signs for the Trail are left up in the playground for up to 5 weeks but the interactive elements, such as props, get put out when our team and pupil monitors are running the Trail which we were doing once or twice a week.  It’s at lunchtime so was accessible to all Junior pupils as an option to participate in as part of their playtime.  We launched it with an assembly and one of the schools’ values is Curiosity hence the name.

What inspired the idea and how was it set up?

 I think the whole Covid era made us not want to automatically return to exactly the same work as we did before without considering what other possibilities could be explored.  During Covid times, in a different role, I set up Christmas and Easter outdoor trails for our church playgroup and other local families so it helped me learn what is possible to achieve outside and the important practicalities that need to be factored in.  I also looked at the School’s values, ethos and curriculum themes to plan in a way that fitted in with those.

What resources / props do you use for the different spaces around the trail?

The summer term Trail theme was Wonderful World:

Wonderful World – children could draw what was wonderful in the world and these would be laminated and out up as an outdoor gallery (art gallery was also a theme one year group had that term)

Sky – looking up at the sky and wondering what is up there

Planets – an interactive game with balls representing planets and a quiz

Calming nature – words from Psalm 23 – lying on grass, breathing, hanging ribbons if found calming 

Autumn term themes:

What size is God? – using weighing scales, rocks, buckets, water and pipettes

What size are we? – a dice and question game

What’s inside us?  – considering our amazing bodies – how did our bodies get made? Body organ props and body organ apron and running round playground to notice what using in their bodies.

How is the Curiosity Trail used? How do pupils take part and who leads the sessions?

In conjunction with the school, a team of Yr 5 pupils were selected to be Monitors to help set up and run the Trail with myself and another BSCWT volunteer so developing pupil leadership skills was also an appealing aspect of the work and gave them some ownership.  The Trail monitors would then help pack up the Trail and have a review meeting with me about what worked well and what could be improved.  The Autumn term Trail was a mix of Yr6 and Yr5 pupils as Monitors.

Do you have a favourite story of a child that took part and the impact it had on them?

I don’t have a story about a specific one child but here is some of the feedback I gave to the school about the pupil engagement with the first Curiosity Trail we ran in Summer 2023:

• Lots of enthusiastic involvement of children participating and asking about the Trail at lunchtimes 
• 99 pictures were drawn about what pupils found beautiful in the world, I ran out of laminating sheets!  The rest were put into a display folder. 
• A Junior sibling told her Reception aged sister about the Trail and the sister drew a picture which she wanted to be added to the World Art gallery.  Also a Yr 3 pupil of their own accord, drew a picture and laminated it themselves and tied it up themselves – it just appeared on the trellis one day! 
• Lots of ribbons were tied up by pupils to show they had enjoyed the Calming Nature zone, these got taken down at intervals to provide more ribbons for the next participants 
• The majority of the Year 5 monitors would like to be part of setting up and running another Curiosity Trail.  A few dropped out along the way but they were still part of the review and feedback process so I could get all their perspectives on what went well and what could be improved 
• Comments notebooks were provided for pupils, a total of 92 comments were written overall!  2 pupils said a something was boring but the rest were incredibly positive.

In addition to the Junior pupils enjoying the Trail as an optional activity at lunchtimes, we also did a guided experience of the Trail for 20 Year 2 children and linked it with their upcoming move to Juniors.

Wow! Thank you so much for sharing with us Frances!

Below are photos that Frances has shared with us of two different trails. If you are interested further in outdoor prayer spaces you can read on more here.