Bromsgrove School receives Community Partner of the Year nomination

Bromsgrove School has recently been shortlisted as ‘Community Partner of the Year’ at this year’s Sense Awards. Sense is a national charity for people with complex communication needs such as deafblindness. The annual Sense Awards celebrate the outstanding achievements if people with complex disabilities, as well as the people and organisations that support them and their families.

For the past six years, both Senior and Prep School students have had the opportunity to learn about sign language during the Deaf Culture and Communication activity sessions hosted by Dr Rimmer, is the School’s Mater of Scholars, and works during her holidays with Sense. Many students have developed an appreciation for BSL poetry, signed songs, and other aspects of Deaf/Deaf people’s experiences, and learned some sign language basics. There have been BSL café sessions, whereby local community members have come along to meet our students, giving them an opportunity to practise their burgeoning language skills.

Year 8 students embraced a ‘transition to Senior School day’; the whole year group were asked to learn about deafblindness, and then design a theme park or employment venue for people with multisensory impairment. To do this they undertook some tasks whilst wearing eye-masks and ear defenders to understand more deeply how people with multisensory impairments navigate the world. The students also learned basic BSL and the deafblind manual alphabet. Furthermore, the students acted as buddies for young people from TouchBase Pears in Selly Oak, the local Sense community centre, as part of the ‘Get Out There’ programme; supporting their participation in bowling, cycling, and on a return visit to school and a swimming session. Finally, students supported Sense by donating the £1500 proceeds from a recent Own Clothes’ Day.

Dr Rimmer herself has stated; “Having worked these last 20 years with Sense, I was pleased to begin making a connection between the charity and Bromsgrove School. It is especially gratifying that, as a consequence, we have been shortlisted as ‘Community Partner of the Year’ at this year’s Sense Awards. The annual Sense Awards celebrate the outstanding achievements of people with complex disabilities, as well as the people and organisations that support them and their families.”