Site Content ©2015 Matt Jolly, Gee King, Josh Fewtrell, Jemma Aldridge all rights reserved. Photographs ©2015 Paul Jolly all rights reserved.

From the days of my interview, I was looking forward to the time when I too would transform an area of a school. I waited with anticipation whilst the projects were being assigned. As the groups received their topic, I felt a pang of disappointment that I was not included in some of the brilliant creative projects. When the title skipping came up, I thought, “Oh please don’t let this be me… and to my utter dismay my name was included!”

Leaving the disappointment behind, we tried to turn the situation around. The most ironic fact was that we were not going to receive marks for getting the schools signed up. This was the easy part, or was it? The PE co-ordinator tended to be in lessons when we were free. When we did achieve contact, they had to get authority from the head. Out of numerous schools we contacted we had interviews with three of them. The main problem seemed to be that Jump Rope for Heart had been around for many years and most schools had done it before, or they had their own identified charities. By Christmas, we realised that this was not going to develop into a working project. We were very grateful that the university understood our plight, and our new project was born.

By the time we had moved on and finally cemented the direction to take, two of us were on placement. Gradually the fog cleared and the plan took hold. We each had our own jobs. Get Roped in with String was born. Whilst my colleagues tried the activities out in schools, I went on a crash course to learn about knots and hitches.

During the Easter vacation we filmed our outside activities in the local woodland. This was the pivotal turning point for me. I experienced what an amazing time these children had, and how easy it was to create activities from what was available in the woodland. With rope and ideas we began making dens, building rope ladders, creating tightropes; there was much fun and laughter. Interestingly, on both filming occasions we had a child with ADHD and they were fully engaged.

Bookmaking brings with it certain challenges for the novice. On one hand, the thought of seeing your handiwork in print is very motivating, which was just as well when the uphill struggles set in! We had a steep learning curve in graphic design, not to speak of finding a graphic designer to advise us, someone who was not going to consume our entire student loan!

Gradually the book began to take shape and we could see our ideas brought to life. It was hard to pick out all the errors until we saw it published in a book format. At this stage our main constraint was the time we had available vs. the time it took to get the book to us even using priority publishing. I will never forget the excitement when we saw the book for the first time. I now appreciate the intricacies of proof reading; it is so easy for the brain to fill in the mistakes! This aside, when we took the book to show people it received a very positive reception and they commented how professional it looked.

One of the aspects of the project was to decide on the percentage allocation of the marks between group members. As a science specialist I addressed this in scientific terms. I viewed our project as a food web, each element was dependent on each other in order to produce the final product. Therefore, each member was of equal importance and deserved an equal share of the marks.

I feel that I have come through a full circle, I no longer feel disappointed that I did not take part in a creative school based project. Our project will reach many people, it has helped me develop my resilience, and I have an appetite to produce more books in the future.

Matt

Josh

Jemma

Gee