Colour me Firwood

In 2012 Firwood High School (a school for students aged 11-19 years with severe or profound learning difficulties) moved into a new building. The new accommodation provided the school with a greater range of specialist facilities and rooms. At Firwood we have a strong emphasis on working together to ensure students enjoy their time at school, that they are happy and make as much progress as possible.

Unfortunately all the time has been spent on making sure students take advantage of the new facilities and ensuring that the school is embedded in the new building. This however has meant that the facilities have been left as a blank canvas that has been described on numerous occasions as clinical. With a significant number of our students spending a lot of time in hospitals, clinics and Doctors surgeries this is not the look or feel that we want for school and therefore we set about changing the environment.

Initially we had some professional pictures taken of the students mounted on the walls to try and brighten the environment but it still remained quite clinical. It was at this point that the Smarter Spaces team stepped in and COLOUR ME FIRWOOD was born! We were provided with a colour specialist and colour suggestions and mood boards were created to see how the school could potentially look in the future, bringing the facilities to life. In the Summer 2016 we started on our mission to create a friendly, warming environment where students can learn without limits and the whole school including staff can be proud of and would look forward to coming to school each day.

We have currently painted the main corridor on the ground floor (KS3) plus the KS4 corridor, the remaining corridor on the ground floor (therapies) will be completed in the Christmas holidays. Once this phase is completed we will move onto painting the upper corridors and then all the classrooms in turn. The school is now committed to a 12-18 month period of refurbishment to ensure that the premises are a pleasant and happy place where all students can achieve

Following the initial phase the school have sourced chairs and couches to create a friendly and appealing Heart to the school. This has had a significant impact with classes being able to use this space as an addition to the classrooms and has created a real heart and soul for the school.