“We are a large primary school, lucky enough to have lots of outdoor space. When lockdown started, we put up a party tent that we’d previously used for events, to enable learning to take place outside and accommodate all our key worker children safely. The system worked well, but the tent had seen better days. So we came up with the idea of getting a couple of classroom marquees ready for September. As a Platinum Artsmark school, we wanted to ensure that the aspects of our curriculum we put a lot of value on – such as group work, music and drama – were able to continue. 

The move to staggered lunchtimes to enable social distancing meant our usual dining hall venue was out of action for much of the day. We also couldn’t use the normal classrooms, since the seats were set up in rows. Each marquee offered 96sqm of space, enough to comfortably accommodate and socially distance 30 children and a teacher. My plan was to designate one marquee for creative work, with the idea that it could become our music room (if we’re allowed to sing and use instruments again), and use the other to extend our classroom provision. 

We’d had really positive feedback about our approach to lockdown and the huge amount of work we’d done, so June seemed like a good time to ask our families for help with funding the marquees, which were £1,500 each. We decided to try crowdfunding, and used DonateMySchool (now part of InvestMyCommunity) who were incredibly helpful and talked us through the process of setting up an appeal, as well as offering additional ideas and support.