We are delighted to have been awarded Awards for All funding to work with the arts and social change charity as well as partnering once again with Space2 and Leeds Beckett University School of Design in delivering our new and exciting arts project Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

Barking Up The Wrong Tree is a creative, environmental and wellbeing project that will be enjoyed by all the children in school- and we’ll be looking for volunteers too.  I wonder how many of us think of trees when we think of books.  When you do stop to consider, it’s amazing how even our language should have alerted us to the links.  Books and trees have leaves, and the word ‘book’ comes from the old English word for beech!  And of course, we make paper from trees.

Through this project, all at Allerton CE Primary will:

• learn about the history of paper-making and printing
• the importance of trees to the environment  recycling and storytelling
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and some children will work with students from Leeds Beckett University and even get to visit the University where they will have a go at making their own paper and try out different printing techniques.

In addition, there will be trips to:

• a local Scrapshed (not ours that enhances our play and lunchtimes on a daily basis) for recycling workshops
• Leeds Incinerator Visitor Centre.

We will also be playing a game of consequences with children form Thorpe Primary, in Middleton, South Leeds, so who knows what stories and wonderful drawings might be inspired.

Pupils will tell their own stories and make their own books, inspired by trees and Dr Seuss’s book ‘The Lorax’. Our stories will prompt conversations across school and hopefully families too, as we begin to think about the local environment and what we can do to help improve it from recycling projects to planting trees.  And that is where parents/carers and friends of Allerton CE Primary can help.  In the spring we will be planting new trees around the school grounds and we need your spades, muscle and green fingers!

In the Spring term all the work that the children and students have created- from their own paper and books to printing displays – will be exhibited at Leeds Beckett University or Leeds Central Library with a launch event for parents and carers.