Tapestry Magazine No. 9, 2022

TAPESTRY Magazine n°9 • 2022

TAPESTRY Magazine n°9 • 2022

Table of contents 04. Introduction 06. BSB Book Festival 12. School Trips Return 16. BSB Sports Philosophy 18. Our History Uncovered 20. Graduation: Congratulations and Celebrations 24. BSB Futures and the Post-School Journey 26. Productions and Performance 34. BSB Insider: ‘We Need to Talk About Keytars’ 36. Families of BSB 40. Festivities and Frolics 44. BSB Insider: ‘Mental Health and the Case Against Exams’ 46. Students in Action 52. BSB’s Healthy Green Heart 56. Outdoor Education 60. The Great Outdoors 64. BSB Insider: ‘The Geography of Climate Change’ 66. Cover Art: ‘Perception, Exposure and Reaction’

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Introduction Melanie Warnes, Principal

It may be an obvious, slightly clichéd thing to say, but schools are much more than the buildings that house those who teach and those who come to learn. A school is a community, it is a family, a support structure. In short, a school is its people – not just those who attend every day but those who are touched by what we do, included in what we do and those who are invited to be part of it. A school lives and thrives on the energy created by these interactions; those which take place between the student body and the staff and those between BSB and the world beyond the gates.

As a community, as a family, we have faced some difficult and unsettling times since our last edition of Tapestry. But because we are a community, a family, we have pulled together and harnessed that energy to go forward, to progress and grow even when it seemed hard.

That energy we create together, that belief in what we do and the commitment to what we want to achieve has been a driving force for BSB over the past two years, during which we all faced unprecedented challenges. These challenges may have taught us to be more cautious when it comes to the future, now we have seen what unanticipated obstacles can be thrown into our path and how our lives can be turned upside down in the blink of an eye. But we have also seen how, as a community, we have all risen to these challenges and have overcome them with courage and determination.

TAPESTRY Magazine n°9 • 2022

There have been so many examples of our students and staff displaying phenomenal resilience, courage and creativity under difficult circumstances in recent times, many of which are detailed in stories featured here in this magazine. It is in times such as these that our BSB values and our Guiding Statements come to the fore in the actions of those who live and work together here at the school.

We’ve seen the very best of our confident, caring and courageous students as they have risen to the challenges of the modern world and the unexpected pitfalls that can occur; we’ve seen the flexibility and determination of all our staff to maintain the highest quality of teaching, learning and support that is second to none despite the unparalleled challenges they have faced, and together we have remained a welcoming and nurturing community where those seeking help can find a home built on mutual respect. We pride ourselves on our aim of being an educational force for good, and I feel we have lived up to that statement more than ever over the past few months.

The stories that you will read here are just a small collection of those we could tell about the incredible efforts that everyone associated with BSB have put in over the last two years. I hope that, in addition to the wonderful examples of everyday bravery and dedication you will see in every article, you will get a sense of the pure joy and boundless enthusiasm for life and learning that typifies BSB. Tapestry • 7

Epic journeys

BSB’s Book Festival makes a comeback After being postponed for a year, BSB’s Book Festival made a triumphant return in October 2021 with two colourful weeks of events featuring a host of international authors, illustrators, and poets.

The theme was ‘Epic Journeys’ and, following that, one of the objectives of the 2021 Book Festival was to inspire the students to immerse themselves in a world of words, whether it be through reading and discussing the books of others, creating their own, or just dressing up for fun as their favourite literary character.

The festival, which ran from 11-22 October, was not only about celebrating the unique way that books create space for deeper, more focused connections and how they take us on exciting and exotic adventures in our imaginations but also how they challenge us to grapple with new ideas that may be difficult to understand or uncomfortable to confront.

Through a diverse selection of special guests, students were given the chance to connect with themes, with characters, with plots, and with complex arguments.

In addition, the Festival organisers this year strived to deliver a programme that was inclusive and representative, whether that be of age, ethnic origin, those with additional needs, religious and political belief, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

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While the organisers were presented with complex and unique challenges when it came to arranging sessions with speakers, those challenges actually helped to create one of the most internationally diverse line-ups in recent memory.

“When we asked ourselves how the festival would look, we really had to consider what was possible in terms of getting people on site,” said Clare Gunns, Faculty Leader English & Media and one of the Festival’s main organisers. “So, we decided that we would do almost all of it online this time and try and get local authors on site, regulations permitting. We invited Belgian-born author and illustrator, Pascal Lemaître for our French speakers and went looking specifically for a poet, who could speak Dutch, French and English who would be able to come on site, if possible, and that was Inke Gieghase.”

“We discovered that this hybrid approach gave us many different choices, that we could actually have people on site creating that excitement of being live here in class, while we’ve also been able to get people from all over the world in a way that we have not been able to before,” added Clare. “For example, we had a former BSB student talking to us about creative writing and self-publishing from Fiji. And this approach also helped us to get big names like former National Poet of

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Scotland, Jackie Kay and British author and actor, Charlie Higson, who was impossible to pin down to come out here in person. But suddenly after doing a couple of sessions with us online, he’s like, ‘I’d love to come to Brussels next time. Just let me know!’”

Ceri Seymour, curriculum leader for Primary English department, also spoke positively of the opportunities that came from this adversity which the restrictions has caused.

“Although it was disappointing that we could not meet all the authors in person, the children still enjoyed their interactions and loved asking questions via video call,” she said.

“We were lucky that the technology worked – almost – flawlessly for the duration of the festival and we hope that having access to this technology will allow us to invite guests from further afield to enhance different areas of our curriculum in the future.”

British author Nikesh Shukla, for example, spoke to classes from Years 9 -13 on how his experience of racism continues to shape his writing and his life; while Keren David talked about her upbringing in the Jewish Community of Welwyn Garden City, a town just north of London, and explained how, in sessions with classes from Years 7 - 11, she had faced antisemitism throughout her career.

Elsewhere during the festival, Scottish author and poet Jackie Kay fielded questions from a panel of Secondary students and those from students posting in the online chat forum.

Jackie talked candidly about growing up as a black, gay woman in Scotland and how the struggles she experienced shaped her writing process and story ideas.

Meanwhile, Flemish poet Inke Gieghase’s sessions brought an extra dimension of gender diversity to the Festival. Inke, who identifies as non-binary, spoke about the challenges they have faced on the periphery of society and how their struggles during their difficult teenage years had infused their later poetry with energy, fire, and hope.

“Inke’s story was incredibly powerful and carried a very positive message for the students,” said Clare Gunns. “Inke didn’t know why they felt like they did until someone said that you don’t have to label yourself, and their life really opened up

after that. It’s not necessarily the answer for everybody, obviously. But I think that it was a moment where we understood that there will probably be students who were listening who will take Inke’s words as their own moment of revelation and think, okay, maybe I don’t have to label myself. And I think that that’s really liberating.”

One such epiphany happened after the British writer and illustrator Ed Vere had read from his children’s book How to Be a Lion with groups of students from year one and year two. One student approached her teacher afterwards and said that the message of the book – that there were lots of ways to be a lion – had helped her realise that she could be whoever she wanted to be. The teacher revealed it had been a very special moment between them, for somebody so young, to get the message and understand the choices she had and the power she had to make them.

As well as hearing about powerful personal journeys– and experiencing their own, students were exposed to some of the realities of the world beyond their school and home lives through sessions such as those held by British writer Sita Brahmachari. The Derby-born author’s latest book for children, Where the River Runs Gold, is a dystopian novel about child slave labour and some of the secondary students who have been learning about the genre in their English lesson were surprised to discover that the themes of Sita’s book are not a fictional portrayal of the future but a factual commentary on the present.

“I think it’s really easy to say, ‘Oh, that’s in the future, or that was in the past’ when looking at the dystopian genre,” said Clare Gunns.

“Instead, we should recognise that lots of children live in the very worst conditions right now. We want our students to understand that this is not a concept happening somewhere else, we want them to be shocked and to want to take action, just as the GIN group discussed with Sita.”

Such interactions were not uncommon during the two weeks of the Festival with students often taking their ideas from the sessions back into class and diving into deep analysis with their teachers.

Of course, while the Book Festival inspired discussions, debates and reflection on

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serious topics and themes, there was also a lot of fun to be had.

Kicking off the Festival on opening day, primary school students were invited to come to school dressed as a character from their favourite book. The students were not the only ones to embrace fancy dress. Adult-sized tigers, pirates and other assorted characters were also seen around campus as several of the teaching staff joined in the fun.

A week later it was the turn of the Secondary students to add a splash of colour to the proceedings, with a very impressive turnout on their own Dress Up Day, despite the arrival of some particularly autumnal weather.

Even the wind and rain in the middle of Week 2 couldn’t dampen the indominable spirits of the unshakeable Poetry Slammers going head-to-head for House points. Overseen

by Inke Gieghase who acted as compère, poets from Pantlin, Goodman and Firman – supported by their house mascots, braved a boisterous but respectful crowd as well as the blustery weather out on the Chessboard to deliver their own emotive and beautifullycrafted words. In the end, Pantlin poets Lara and Celia both scored 100 points with their winning performances. Goodman’s Oli, and Firman’s Naomi and Abbey came in second, winning 50 points each for their houses. Abdul and Lindsey, both from Goodman, won 25 points each for coming third.

“I was utterly amazed by the talent and bravery that was shown by the students who performed during the poetry event,” said Inke Gieghase. “When I was their age, I had never read one of my writings out loud. And they just did it in front of all these students and teachers.

It makes me really happy to see that the next generation speaks up and talks about topics that matter to them.”

“I think it’s vital that schools focus more on letting their students express themselves,” Inke added. “That’s why I can only applaud BSB for organising this event and giving their students a platform to let their voices be heard.

Like Audre Lorde said: ‘Poetry is not only a dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.’ Poetry was a way for

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me to find my voice and to be able to express my emotions and experiences and I’m sure it has the power to do so for way more people, especially youth.”

Inke also performed their own poem ‘Toxic’ at the conclusion of the event, as the heavens opened, and the judges tent threatened to take flight. “‘Toxic’ is about my experience in this society as a non-binary person,” they said. “Through this poem I share vital bits of my identity and create more awareness for my own community. I’m honestly convinced poetry has the power to create positive change.”

Primary also hosted its own Poetry Slam, which Ceri Seymour described as a “personal highlight” of the festival. “I was amazed by the variety of ways that the theme of ‘Epic Journeys’ was interpreted by different classes and by the effort that everyone put into writing and performing their poems,” she said.

There was more poetry fun courtesy of performance poet Spoz in the first week of the Festival who turned about 80 Year 4 students into “chocolate rappers” during his first session on the morning of 13 October and repeated this entertaining feat with Year 6 children later that day. “It was master class in how to write a rap all about the subject of chocolate,” said Primary teacher Harriet Powell. “The presentation may have been online, but the results were tangible: within five minutes, every Year 6 class had produced some form of rap that they presented to each other.”

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The creative process was at the heart of another high-spirited session led by author and illustrator Sarah McIntyre. Her Y2 students were involved in creating their own character and book cover based on Sarah’s own Grumpycorn series. Step-by-step, the author showed the classes how to draw Grumpycorn and how to give the character their own personal twist. By adding a picture of their own favourite food to the front of its sweater and adding it to the front part of its name, the children created characters such as Spaghetticorn, Pizzacorn and Ice-Creamcorn!

Year Two students had a similarly enjoyable experience with Steve Skidmore who managed to keep his classes engaged for an

hour via a video screen, which was no mean feat. “He amazed me with his ability to keep the children interested for that long,” said teacher Linda Ochsenmeier. “He gave us a glimpse of how he sees his characters when he read part of one book with all the different accents and expressions. He also gave some insights into where he gets his stories - the one about the Killer Custard was based on his own experience with a dinner lady when he was a boy. We all had fun choosing our own adventures and were left with a real appreciation for the process.”

Throughout the whole festival, teaching staff were also giving away books to students and parents alike. Drawn from the BSB basement where they had been kept in storage after previous book festivals, over 100 books were gifted. “I think this is really important too,” said

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Clare Gunns. “We’ve got this enormous stock of books from past events, and we just wanted to share them, share the love of books with the students and their families. They were just sitting in a basement. I want them out in the world.”

After a hugely successful, thought-provoking, and entertaining fortnight, the 2021 Book Festival came to a close, leaving the organisers to take stock and reflect on one of the biggest, best, and most challenging festivals to date.

“From learning about growing up in Zimbabwe to drawing unicorns and from writing rhyming couplets to learning about work with refugees, the Primary children have been introduced to a wide range of experiences through our Book Festival,” said Ceri Seymour. “Our aim was to value the authors and genres that the children already enjoy while also introducing them to new books and experiences. I think this year’s event achieved that.”

Clare Gunns seemed determined to keep the momentum going by expanding the range of authors and literature the students can be exposed to.

“With this festival, I wanted to bring the joy back to our students, who have had such a challenging time,” she said. “There’s such a wealth of modern writers out there, and diverse writers and diverse cultures. We have 70 nationalities in our school. It’s our duty to give people the opportunity to recognise themselves in literature. I think that’s really important.”

“We want to challenge ourselves and our students and we want them to value diversity in the stories they hear and sympathise with people’s experiences, especially when they are different to their own. The Book Festival is a starting point to this, and we can’t wait to build on the joy in the future.”

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Adventures near and far School trips return

Over the last 18 months we have seen the return of our school trips, with students embarking on journeys of discovery and adventure during May and June as part of our commitment to a holistic education programme for our students.

The trips programme offers the students the opportunity to visit the highest quality destinations and facilities, and enjoy new, exciting experiences and activities under the guidance of professionally trained external providers, supported and encouraged by our equally talented BSB staff.

The aim of these trips is to provide our students with a safe new environment where they have the space to take measured risks, while encouraging their independence and holistic development. The trips put the students in situations where they can learn about and improve life skills through a range of exciting and challenging activities and experiences.

Each trip is designed to give students the opportunity to foster new and deeper relationships outside of the classroom and develop stronger bonds with each other and the staff who accompany them. Taking part in these adventures is an important part of the healthy, vibrant and progressive culture we strive to create where children and adults can successfully learn together.

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While trips returned on a comprehensive scale in the early summer of 2022, several muchneeded excursions actually took place back in June 2021, the first ones of note since the widespread health restrictions began limiting our travel opportunities. Students from all year groups, along with staff members, welcomed the freedom and enjoyed the togetherness provided by trips to the Belgian Ardennes.

There was a tangible sense of relief and joy in the air as our students took to the treetops on rope walks and zip lines, embracing the exhilaration and camaraderie after weeks of quarantine and isolation.

In 2022, with the programme back in full swing, our Secondary students have been on residential trips to Oetztal, Austrian alps, Les Orres in the Southern French Alps, and the Belgian Ardennes, among other exciting places. Along with their teachers, they have seen the highest waterfall in Tyrol, biked, hiked and zip-lined through stunning mountain scenery, learned about alpine flora and fauna and rafted rapids.

In early May, our Year 7 students travelled to the Netherlands for a four-day stay in the Amsterdam area. During their visit, they enjoyed team building exercises and sports activities on the fort island of Forteiland Ijmuiden, took part in dragon boat racing, played frisbee golf on the island’s private

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beach and refuelled at a fantastic BBQ at the Nova Zembla Pavilion. Before returning to Belgium, the students visited the Twiske Nature Reserve under beautiful blue skies, traversing the reserve’s tree top walk before descending by zipline to take part in mountain biking and orienteering activities.

water sports. It was at these sites that the group took part in a wide variety of aquatic activities on La Durance where they enjoyed rafting and sailing, before heading back up to the pastures and larch forests around the sports village of Les Orres to hit the trails for mountain biking and hiking.

Year 8 students travelled to the Austrian Tyrol for five days in early June, taking in Area 47 - Europe’s largest outdoor park. Austria’s ultimate outdoor adventure park is known for its adrenaline-fuelled extreme sports, breath-taking gorges, deep caves, and wild white-water rapids. The students showed great courage and determination to tackle the park’s famous rafting experience and the thrills of wakeboarding on the lake, with everyone returning to dry land with huge, proud smiles and bursting with excitement to go again.

Towards the end of June, our Year 10 group headed to the Belgian Ardennes for a staffled, four-day excursion where the focus was on learning life skills as well as taking part in various outdoor exercises. The main party was made up of two groups: those following the Duke of Edinburgh Award programme and the Mixed Activities Group.

More mountain adventures were enjoyed by our Year 9 group who ascended to an altitude of 1500 metres to stay at the resort of Les Orres in the Southern French Alps, also in the first half of June.

Nestled in the heart of a preserved forest, the resort provided our students with the best of both worlds: a Mediterranean climate and an amazing mountain experience with views of the Durance valley and the Serre-Ponçon lake, two exceptional sites for practising

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Both groups enjoyed excursions to the surrounding areas, a navigation hike through the forests, a team clean-up challenge and social activities.

Additionally, the Duke of Edinburgh Award students took part in expedition training before undergoing a practice expedition.

The Mixed Activities Group also went on an exploration trip as well as taking to the high ropes between the trees, and the hill paths on mountain bikes.

It has been wonderful to see all our students embracing the exciting opportunities and activities offered this year and to see how confident and courageous they can be when faced with these fun yet demanding activities.

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A long-term vision for success BSB’s sports philosophy Despite having to overcome the many of the same challenges that have affected every other aspect of school life, BSB’s athletes have excelled in all of their disciplines over the past two years, with record-breaking results in a number of sports during 2022 capping a successful return to face-to-face competition.

These results don’t just happen by chance.

Not only are they the reward for all the hard work put in by students and staff alike, but they are also the outcome of a sporting philosophy which was adopted with a long term vision of success in mind.

The success that BSB has enjoyed over the last months and years can be traced back to the refocusing of the school’s sports philosophy in 2016 following a significant and visionary investment by the Board of Governors into sports facilities.

With the opening of the state-of-the-art Jacques Rogge Sport Centre that year, it was only fitting that a new, clear mission for sports should be developed at the same time. That mission, to be ‘A Global Beacon for Sport,’ would be presented to the Board of Governors at the end of 2017 in the form of the 2020 Vision: Sport Strategy.

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This strategy included five Whole School commitments: Every BSB student would be given the platform to become the best swimmer they could be; the whole school, from Reception to Year 13, would receive two hours of specialist PE per week; Enrichment would invest in three Tier One sports that run year-round, whilst also expanding recreational opportunities through further investment in external specialist coaches; PE provision would improve through recruitment, curriculum content, initial teacher training and academic provision, and students would have the choice to find ‘their’ sport and continue with lifelong healthy activity.

These commitments were ambitious and required a collective effort to achieve. The adaptation of existing structures, fantastic recruitment, and a school commitment to support and investment have ultimately led to BSB hitting all the above targets.

In our bid to become a Global Beacon for Sport, BSB is now the only British School in Europe to be part of the three flagship sport conferences: ISSA (International School Sport Association), ESC (European Sports Council) and SCIS (Sports Council of Internal Schools). Alongside this we are the only international school to be part of ISGA (Independent Schools Gymnastics Association) and ISFA (Independent Schools Football Association).

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Our swim programme has over six hundred students, which has led to BSB becoming the leading international school in Europe for swimming – as our recent winning of all four categories at the COBIS Games and ISST events has proven.

Football has been established as a Tier 1 year-round sport in partnership with English Premiership club West Ham United, who have placed one of their Academy Coaches at the school to spearhead the programme.

BSB has also built on its commitment to bring the best staff possible to the school by recruiting world class teachers and coaches. In the last five years we have secured a GB Olympic swimmer, a GB Commonwealth Games swimmer, a Belgian National Footballer, a Belgian National Gymnastics coach and a Belgian National Rugby player to name but a few. As outstanding as these appointments have been, the most important ingredient all these staff possess is their commitment to the values of BSB – our Guiding Statements. They fit our culture. We now have a team of fifty plus professionals working hard with our students to achieve our sporting goals.

Additionally, BSB has created a partnership with TES, formerly known as the Times Educational Supplement, to become one of the few International Schools to run an internal teacher training programme which culminates in two newly qualified teachers graduating in Sports from BSB every year. On top of this the school invests considerable resources in the professional learning of all staff - new and longer standing - and this has resulted in a consistently high-performing and highlymotivated team of practitioners.

The school has also invested in 2 UEFA standard football pitches, 3 tennis courts, the largest traverse climbing wall in Europe and four outdoor basketball areas.

There is no doubting this massive investment has contributed to our success. So much research clearly suggests students develop through informal play, where plenty of practice is acquired. The 2-3 hours of formal coaching a week offers the structure, but students will only become good at any sport through regular training and exposure to sport. One of the greatest things is to see students at every break and lunchtime playing football, basketball and tennis. They are accessing the facilities and improving their game without even realising.

As well as the coaching and the facilities which have helped to increase our sporting success, BSB has also invested in the details behind our winning culture. The introduction of physio support, nutritional advice and an on-site strength and conditioning coach has helped professionalise our elite athlete programmes and give our students the extra edge they need to compete and succeed at the highest level.

Of course, nothing could be achieved without the dedicated students we have here at BSB. Incredibly, our Sports programmes consistently boast a 90% sign up for students across the school who want to be involved in sport. And this high sign-up percentage is repeated year on year. Our biggest problem is fitting everyone in!

Our students want to improve and achieve great things but more importantly, they sign up for sports to enjoy themselves! A recent survey across the school asked what it is that students enjoyed most about sport at BSB, and the resounding answer, which is more important than anything else we can offer, was ‘FUN.’ And behind all the glory, investment, achievements and success, if students were not having fun, none of this success would be possible.

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Royal plans for BSB’s sports site Our history uncovered Every day we are blessed to come to a school with such a modern, purpose-built campus and state-of-the-art facilities. These facilities were of course upgraded in 2016 when the most ambitious project in the school’s 51-year history was realised with the building of the new swimming pool, gym, and sports hall. In addition to that, the revamping of the outdoor sports pitches in 2020 continued the school’s history of new building developments, technological investments, and improvements.

in the museum’s basement showed that the King also had plans at the time for the site on which our school now sits.

But did you know that the idea for our sports facilities was conceived over 200 years ago, long before the school itself was created?

“Many of the attractions and grand buildings of Brussels were located in the very centre of the city, such as the museum of Belgian history,” says Maarten Couttenier, an expert in history and politics at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren. “But then Leopold had plans for expanding the city which started with the creation of the Parc du Cinquantenaire and continued with the avenues leading out of the city which he planned to use for urbanisation and the further expansion of Brussels.”

Back in 2014, the Museum of Central Africa uncovered a set of old plans that King Leopold II had for this site once he had completed his architectural development of Tervuren. Despite a questionable history internationally, the monarch known as The Builder King, certainly had a clear vision for Brussels and its surroundings.

After completing the long boulevard which reaches Tervuren from the outskirts of eastern Brussels, King Leopold wanted his builders to create a school close to the Colonial Palace. And not just any school but an École Mondiale, a world school, which would be a place of academic excellence and architectural grandeur.

It is often assumed that King Leopold’s architects, once they had completed their development of Avenue Tervuren, planned to finish their work by building the museum and the royal palace that neighbour BSB in the rolling parklands and forest of Tervuren.

However, the historical records discovered

It is well-documented that BSB is located on the very site that the King had first identified for this but what the uncovered plans also revealed was that Leopold and his architects had planned to build the École Mondiale’s sports facilities on the exact spot that our state-of-the-art sports centre is now.

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“From the plans, we see that on that site, Leopold had ambitions to build sports infrastructure for the École Mondiale which included a cycling velodrome and a horse racing course,” says Maarten Couttenier. “In the end, the site on which BSB now sits was deemed too marshy and the plans for the École Mondiale were amended to locate it next to the Colonial Palace which is now the Africa Museum.”

So, when the current sports complex was created, it not only fulfilled the vision of Sir Dick Pantlin who, in 1972 outlined his plans for ‘a big gym and a swimming pool’ in a memo to fellow founders ‘Messrs Firman, Goodman and Humphries’, but completed a idea conceived almost two centuries before that by The Builder King.

So, while we can take pride in all that has been achieved both structurally and academically here at BSB over the past 51 years, we can also marvel at the fact that the very concept of our school – and our amazing sports facilities - is rooted in a royal decree issued in a bygone age, that until very recently we didn’t even know about!

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Graduation

Congratulations and celebrations Every year, the British School of Brussels (BSB) honours its graduating students in a wonderful ceremony which lauds their achievements and brings family and friends together in a day of celebration. It is an important and much-loved annual tradition at BSB and, despite the many challenges that we have faced over the past two years, the school has managed to stage the event even when hosting gatherings of such size and complexity has proved to be logistically demanding.

In 2020, due to the health restrictions that had been brought in a few months previously, those parents who attended arrived at staggered times to ensure social distancing regulations were observed, and were seated on hay bales in small groups on the lawns by the car park.

Despite this, the joy in the warm summer air was palpable and, after a prolonged period of confinement, there was an ecstatic buzz of excitement crackling between groups as everyone happily gathered, albeit masked and socially distanced, in an emotional atmosphere to honour and celebrate.

Students, staff and family members showed typical BSB resilience and spirit in the face of adversity to create a truly heart-warming event at a time of such adversity; a show of determination and courage that was

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reflected in the speech by then Co-School President Lucas who delivered a stafffocused message, saying: “thank you for the sacrifices you have made to get us to where we are today. Your dedication to our future has not gone unnoticed.” So as not to exclude anyone, the presentations from the Co-Student Presidents and the Leadership Team were live-streamed to those parents at home who could not attend.

Sue Munday and James Willis, the Co-Heads of Post-16 at the time, commented after the 2020 ceremony: “We were absolutely thrilled to have been able to hold such a wonderful event that was very much in-keeping with our BSB traditions and community ethos. There was a time when we were thinking that the students would miss out this year – instead, it was one of the best ever!”

By the time the Class of 2021 were ready to celebrate, the restrictions on large scale gatherings had begun to ease, allowing for a huge audience to attend the ceremony under glorious sunshine on the Tintin playground.

Distancing measures were still in place and face masks were still required at times but the fact that so many more people could come onto campus compared to the previous year added to the triumphant atmosphere.

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Graduates and their families were treated to emotive and inspiring speeches from Principal Melanie Warnes and John Knight, Vice-Principal & Head of Secondary School, before the students left their families to attend their sumptuous celebration dinner in the specially constructed marquee.

This year, 116 students from the Class of 22, impeccably dressed and brimming with pride, took to the stage one by one to rapturous applause in the school’s JR Hall. It was the largest contingent of graduating students in the school’s history and the packed hall echoed with jubilation as each of them was lauded for their achievements.

The graduation venue had to be moved from the traditional stage as our Year 13 numbers are so large now that not everyone could fit in there anymore. It is likely that even more students, around 140, will fill the venue next year.

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After the removal of the health restrictions of the previous two years, it was with a mixture of happiness and relief that we welcomed so many family members into the venue.

The event, hosted by the outgoing School Student Presidents, began with a champagne reception as proud parents, excited students and delighted staff mingled and shared stories in a relaxed but expectant atmosphere.

The graduating students also had the opportunity to share a special moment with each other as formal photos were taken, creating photographic memories of enduring friendships and shared success.

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During her speech which brought the formal ceremony to a close, Melanie spoke about the importance of community and family, and the energy that we can all draw from these relationships, especially in difficult circumstances such as those experienced over the previous two years. That energy, and the spirit of togetherness at BSB, she said, had been the driving force behind the commitment and resilience the students had shown to overcome the obstacles placed in their path and face the unprecedented challenges of recent times head on.

“I cannot express how proud I am of all of you, students and staff, for your courage and resilience, your togetherness, and your willingness to adapt during those most trying of times,” she said, before concluding with a toast to the graduating students. “So, as you leave BSB, know where you have come from, appreciate where you have been and head confidently towards where you are going.

Class of 2022, we are so proud of you. Good luck.”

After the difficulties of the last two years, it was a triumphant and jubilant return, providing everyone in attendance the opportunity to not only celebrate the success and hard work of the graduating students but the chance to share such a special moment together.

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Care, guidance and support BSB futures and the post-school journey In Autumn 2021, BSB Futures found a home in the Pathfinder Hub, a newly created segment of the Care, Guidance and Support team aimed at helping Secondary students to explore their aspirations beyond BSB. This was not only a physical move as the BSB Futures office is now firmly embedded within the post-16 space in Mercator, but it was also an ideological move; under the Care, Guidance and Support umbrella, the programme focuses more than ever on raising the student aspirations and promoting self-reflection throughout the Secondary journey. The Futures programme helps students to make well-informed choices about future career opportunities based on real life examples and mentoring.

This shift is evident in a number of growing initiatives. In addition to its staple career and university talks, BSB Futures now offers students 1:1 meetings with mentors working or studying in their field of interest. All Secondary students have the opportunity to get specific about career concerns that they may not otherwise raise in a group setting and get an honest glimpse into what actually happens behind the scenes of their ‘dream job’. These sessions can be especially useful for older students as they move toward university applications or other post-BSB pathways.

Kheya, a Year 12 student considering a career in Finance, was paired with professionals at Goodyear, Barclays and Alpha FMC: 26 • The British School of Brussels

“Having these bespoke sessions is really enriching and stimulating to my learning,” she said. “I wanted to know more about what a career in Finance entailed. I was given lots of specific advice about how to excel in finance and how the university structure works.

I’ve learnt that there are many things to do, however it is ok to make mistakes. I’ve also learnt how to make the most of my time here at BSB.” Two of the professionals who helped Kheya were themselves former BSB students, a population that has become increasingly active across BSB Futures programming.

Alumni of all ages and professional backgrounds have proven as enthusiastic about imparting their wisdom and experience as we have been to welcome them back; after all, who can offer a more relevant perspective than someone who may have literally sat in our students’ places only a few years ago?

TAPESTRY Magazine n°9 • 2022

After multiple meetings with a Year 10 student whose heart is set on working in railway transport, alum Dominic Mottram of Network Rail said, “Having the opportunity to give back to the community and the students that were me ten to fifteen years ago is brilliant to do. It’s really important to feel like we’re giving back, but also giving students the opportunity to have different perspectives and to see where learning and things at BSB can take you around the world.”

In addition to the more obvious benefits of alumni participation, it is our hope that current students will feel inspired to share their stories and understand that their voices are valued here long after they leave the school.

BSB Futures’ place in the Pathfinder Hub also marks a major step forward in embedding careers programming into the curriculum.

Beginning in the 2021-2022 school year, we have teamed up with Hub colleagues in the Higher Education office to ensure that every Year 10 student knows how to use Unifrog, a fantastic online resource with in-depth information on universities, apprenticeships, programmes of study and career paths. Each Year 10 tutor group now receives three full lessons in how to navigate and make the most of the platform.

With this foundation, students can explore their personal strengths and interests independently or take time to discover new ones in a low-pressure environment. They will also feel more comfortable using it in Years 12 and 13, when most will need it to organise their university applications.

Furthermore, staff are working closely with the Year 7-11 PSHE programme to embed careers within the course’s 2022 – 2023 curriculum. PSHE’s focus on social and emotional learning is very much reflected in our approach to careers. Instead of focusing on a particular job, students are invited to formulate a mission; a student who seems fixated on becoming a doctor, for example, might be encouraged to reframe their goal as one of improving global or local healthcare.

Reflecting on what values lie at the heart of their interests can keep students open to more options for the future and adds a new layer of depth to their aspirations and identity.

It is our hope that this approach, combined with workshops such as how to formulate an elevator pitch, create your own business card, write a CV and interview for imaginary jobs, will alleviate some of the concerns surrounding the future, grounding them within their own skills and strengths.

Tom Vuerinckx, teacher and Coordinator of the Year 7-11 PSHE programme, looks forward to strengthening the connection between PSHE and BSB Futures.

“We strongly believe that it will help us to achieve our aim, and that is supporting our students in building a positive identity, nurturing healthy relationships and making responsible decisions,” Tom said. “These life skills will empower them to take a grip on the steering wheel of their lives and to plan out a route that will lead to their happiness and success.”

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Productions and performance Filling the school with joy and happiness No part of the school community remained unaffected by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic as it took hold in 2020. Despite the restrictions brought in to combat the spread of the virus, and the effects they had on activities where contact and proximity were an integral part of their essence, every department dug deep into their reserves to overcome the unprecedented obstacles put in their way.

This is the story of how the courage, conviction and persistence of students and staff alike kept the spirit of performance and presentation alive during a two-year period of trials and tribulations and how they continued to fill the halls and rooms of BSB with joy and happiness.

Told by: Christi-Ann Nancarrow, Faculty Leader Performance & the Arts, Jane Whitehouse, Department Leader Drama, Neil Ringrose, Head of Primary and one of the Vice-Principals at BSB, and Esther O’Connor, Team Leader Early Years.

Everything seemed so normal in the Music Department at BSB at the start of 2020.

The production of Hairspray: The Musical in December 2019 had been a remarkable success and with great optimism and enthusiasm, the staff began planning the school’s Music Festival, which was to take place in March 2020. Instrumental teachers were working hard to prepare their students to perform solos, duets, and trios in front of a visiting adjudicator from the UK, whilst choirs and other larger ensembles started working on their new programmes for the event.

By mid-March everything was organised and ready to go, with rehearsals reaching the final stages, when a period of confinement was called approximately one week before the festival was due to take place. The adjudicator had to cancel their travel arrangements at the last minute and the students were unable to perform, as everyone was stuck at home.

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TAPESTRY Magazine n°9 • 2022

In the meantime, class music lessons had to change significantly to work online.

Listening exercises took over from the usual performance and composition lessons for KS3, whilst at GCSE, IB and A level, some composition lessons also took place online, with student and teacher each sitting at a piano in their homes, exchanging musical ideas and possibilities for development.

The course work pieces for IB were largely generated in this manner, and in true BSB spirit, the students overcame the difficulties to come through with some magnificent work.

Thankfully, all performances for GCSE and A level had already been recorded before the lockdown, or this could have been really problematic in terms of results.

Over in the Early Learning and Primary departments, structures that had been put in place to improve and develop ideas of community and connection through presentations and productions were also disrupted when the school was forced to shut down and students were required to attend classes online from their own homes.

The staff were faced with challenges around maintaining development and improvement, and the activities designed to help students build up their courage, resilience, and confidence – values we pride ourselves on at BSB, when the children were no longer on campus.

The use of technology during that time to try and maintain community and connection was vital. One of the most heart-warming experiences of that whole time came when the singing assemblies adopted a similar approach. One class would be singing in the hall while being live streamed to other classrooms. The joyful sound of other classes singing along would fill the halls and it was moving to hear as the songs drifted through the school with everyone joining in.

The technology was also utilised to allow productions to tentatively be planned and organised again, with the events being filmed and presented as mini movies to families at home. In Primary, all students, if they were in school, were able to take part in productions which were adapted to the realities we faced, and the technology we had introduced allowed us keep going. The situation unfortunately did not allow parents to attend the productions on campus but by filming them and making them available online, staff managed to maintain that special connection.

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Primary students were involved in filming productions in the school’s Brel theatre and in other locations around campus. Staff ensured that, despite the circumstances, continuity was maintained as much as possible with regular productions involving all Primary students taking place in Brel, just as they had been before the restrictions were brought in. It was important that every child in every year group – if they were on campus – was involved and took part. And the children, of course, rose to the challenge and participated with typical enthusiasm, whether it was for the camera or later, when we started to have parents back on campus for the shows.

board of governors, trustees and so on.

Unfortunately, the concert in the summer term was postponed. By the end of the academic year, the Music Festival, Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) exams, and Summer Concert had all been cancelled.

Meanwhile, in the Drama department, teaching in some classes had returned by the end of the Summer Term 20192020. Elsewhere, adaptation to teaching approaches was needed when a whole IB unit of work had to be cancelled. Thankfully, everything at A-Level continued. The staff did have to restructure a lot of the planning, though, as IB and A-Level were taught together.

Hope remained that the school (and the wider world) would return to some semblance of normality by the summer as another big and important event had been planned: the concert to celebrate the school’s 50th birthday. Music was selected for choirs, bands and orchestras and special guests were invited to come from a variety of countries for the occasion. The list was to include former principals of the school,

Despite things looking bleak as the students and staff broke up for the summer holidays, the return for the new school year in September 2020 brought with it a sense of determination to adapt to the new realities and somehow make it work. Staff members started to consider alternative ways to manage some of the planned performances and events for the new academic year.

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TAPESTRY Magazine n°9 • 2022

Cancellations were still a regular occurrence, unfortunately, and the school’s usual ‘instrument try out day’ in September was also cancelled. Instead, the instrumental teachers were asked to each prepare a video to demonstrate their instrument, instead of the usual live demonstrations, to show students and their parents what was on offer.

The year started with a mixture of online and in-school lessons across all departments, and in the school’s acting groups, musical bands and ensembles started rehearsing under the new rules, observing social distancing, and wearing masks. For the Drama students, many struggled with creating the relationships which are at the heart of acting, something the staff make a point of emphasising throughout their lessons. These important relationships were suddenly strained emotionally by apprehension and physically by masks and distancing. Emotions and actions felt like they were on shifting sands.

Students and staff alike fluctuated between the creative drive to find innovative solutions and exhaustion at repetitious limitations.

Meanwhile, in the Music department, there were other challenges. The instrumental teachers had to be very flexible, as students were sometimes in school and at other times at home, whilst visiting external teachers were not allowed into school. This was the most demanding situation for the teachers as they then had to use evenings and weekends to teach online when the students were at home and available.

Even though the situation provided both students and staff with problems and obstacles to overcome, there was a growing sense of optimism and excitement throughout the school as it became clear that everyone was finding a way to overcome the difficulties and rise above them.

The winter holidays came and went, and by the time school started again in the New Year, it became clear that – one way or another – there would be a Music Festival in 2021, even if there would be no live audience. Showing great resilience and determination, the music department started planning in earnest.

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Incredibly, the Music Festival took place against all the odds in March 2021. Over 150 acts performed in the adjudication sessions, which were all live streamed so that parents, families, and friends could watch from home.

The festival culminated in a recorded concert, featuring a variety of first-class acts selected by the adjudicator. The performance was then released on eBSB, the school’s online portal, for the whole community to watch.

The joy and relief that some performances had finally taken place was palpable, even though they had not been presented to a live audience.

All of this was a massive test in creativity and technical ability for everybody. Staff wanted parents to still have the experience of being an active part of their child’s learning journey – but the big question remained: how could we recreate that during such challenging times?

The necessity of performing online - since parents were not allowed on campus - was an opportunity to rethink performances, and truly allowed staff and students alike to explore the creative possibilities of using technology to share their activities.

The first performance carried out without an audience in Primary was Through the Magic Door, which linked to learning about

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Minibeasts and Animal Magic. Through the Magic Door allowed the Kindergarten children to develop a distinct set of skills. In addition to expanding their repertoire of songs, they shared ideas about how to respond and move to music for a recorded performance, and it helped develop their confidence to perform in front of a camera.

Away from assemblies, presentations and productions, Primary staff used their expanding knowledge of what was possible and harnessed even more creativity to bring new and exciting experiences to their students and enhance the feeling of togetherness, despite the challenges.

Beyond the performances, staff also sought ways in which they could share pockets of work and activity from a unique perspective.

The Early Years online journalling software ‘Tapestry’ was introduced around this time. It was a timely addition that helped staff build a special record of students’ experiences, development and learning journey through their early years and primary education that we could share with parents when they could not be physically present.”

Using photos, videos, and diary entries, Tapestry allowed staff to ‘weave’ the story of the student and how they grew and developed, capturing key learning moments and marking milestones. Parents could

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view their child’s progress, the activities provided for them, and how much fun they were having, whilst also uploading their own comments and media.

Other activities in Primary included the launch of weekly videos, showing things such as ‘how we learn maths,’ ‘what we discovered in forest school today’… to give a true picture of the students’ day. Staff also introduced weekly storytelling, which was a lovely way to connect, and adapted Enrichment classes so that they could be held online.

Just when it felt that a corner had been turned, once again the plans to stage the postponed 2020 Summer Concert were scrapped.

New restrictions made it impossible for the ensembles to rehearse and, with heavy hearts, staff agreed to cancel the concert.

However, the ABRSM examination board made it possible for students to sit their individual online performance exams in summer 2021. Cormac, the school’s new Performing Arts Admin Co-Ordinator, took this on board and organised the entries of over one hundred exams for students in June 2021. This was a record number of exams at any one session, and it took over a week to record them all. This was a positive way to end the school year and gave everyone hope that more could be achieved in the future.

Before the students returned in September 2021, staff across all departments set about adapting plans and teaching methods to address the new regulations.

Because Drama is not taught in Belgian schools, there were no specific guidelines for teaching Drama in the classroom. As a result, Jane Whitehouse had to create a set of guidelines for the school based on theatre guidance from the UK.

But everyone kept going and, as whole classes returned, the students rallied too. GCSE devised examinations were maintained by staff coming in on Saturdays and working as a ‘bubble.’ The lack of audience was made up by the inclusion of a camera and more than a little extra encouragement.

With the new academic year came a real sense of conviction across the whole school.

Small positive steps helped to build on that.

In the Music department, the instrumental teachers finally returned to school for the annual September meeting. Additionally, the ‘try out’ day returned to its usual format, where the parents and students could meet instrumental teachers in person, with the students getting a chance to try playing the instruments to help decide which they wanted to learn.

As summer turned to autumn, great resilience and determination was shown throughout the school as plans for productions and concerts went ahead under constantly changing regulations and the looming threat of cancellation.

Despite all the challenges everyone faced, the school’s traditional ‘Jazz Night’ in November 2021 managed to go ahead, making it the first live music event for almost two years and one which saw the return of parents and families on campus as audience members.

The level of flexibility and ingenuity involved to make such an event happen cannot be understated and it served as a beacon to everyone who was working to get the school back to normality again.

When teaching returned to split classes inschool and online, creativity came from the students. Their online peers still featured in performances in class, as they were carried around by a group member, speaking their part out from a screen. With one studio down due to lack of air flow, Campus Ops did their absolute best to find us spaces for lessons and everyone learnt to remedy clash with compromise.

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Of course, for every peak there is a trough and the introduction of more restrictions and regulations meant that as the year ended, the school’s Christmas festivities were under threat. But once again, the BSB spirit could not be dampened and creativity came to the fore, with staff and students pitching in to overcome the obstacles together and make the annual Christmas show a reality.

Combining recorded performances from all year groups into one online production, the Christmas Concert in digital form was not only a heart-warming success but also another testament to the never-say-die attitude that fuels the BSB community in times of adversity.

This period was a time of realigning and rethinking. It was a challenging time that needed creativity – which BSB students and team have in spades. It built resilience and reflected the courageous nature of our whole community.

As the world and life returned to a sense of normalcy, and productions began to return to our stages in all their glory, BSB students and staff capped off a joyful artistic resurgence with wonderful and life-affirming performances of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol in late November 2021 and Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book in May the following year.

Young actors from Years 10-13 presented Dickens’ festive tale to a rapt audience of enchanted parents, bringing the tale of redemption, love and compassion set in the dark, winter days of Victorian Britain, to life with great energy and boundless enthusiasm.

As with most productions over the previous two years, it almost did not happen. In Autumn 2020, the production team hesitantly started out on their production journey, only to find our

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path quickly barred, at the discussion stage, by the health restrictions. But in 2021, as the situation started to improve, the students and staff gathered fresh and began again, fully supported by the school’s leadership team.

The mood amongst all involved, from the very first audition to the last crew member who joined the team, was one of determination.

They were committed to making it happen, that this time the young actors would return to the stage.

And what a return it was. The production, the first time the school had been able to hold a cross-ages Secondary school production since 2019, was a triumph.

The recovery was completed in May 2022 when our sumptuous production of The Jungle Book hit the stage in the Brel Theatre. With explosive colours and action, and with actors from Years 7-9 performing out of their skins, the audience was treated to an exotic and magical interpretation of Kipling’s enchanting coming-of-age story. It was truly captivating event which proved that productions and performance were truly back at BSB. It had been a rollercoaster journey but true to BSB’s Guiding Statements, which talk about being caring, being confident, and being courageous, our students, staff, parents overcame incredible odds by living these attributes and being those values in action.

Everyone should be proud of what was achieved as a team during these trying times.

Everyone showed so much flexibility and desire to help. The strength of our roots as a community enabled us to grow again, rebuild collaborative trust and create new energy. We are forever grateful for everyone who helped us do so.

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BSB Insider

We need to talk about keytars BSB student journalists have continued to submit to and produce editions of the Insider student magazine over the past two years, writing numerous articles on current and social affairs topics, reviews, and opinion pieces as well as on events taking place around the school.

Here, Adam – a former Insider editor – waxes lyrical on his love for much maligned keytar instrument.

Long-time readers of the BSB Insider might have noticed that at least one of my articles in every issue refers to a certain musical instrument; the keytar, a keyboard-guitar hybrid. Sometimes it’s just a passing mention, sometimes it’s more integral to the article substance, sometimes I realise I forgot to include a keytar reference, so I stick it in lastminute in an arbitrary Editor’s Letter. Either way, it’s always there, often accompanied with a free-to-use picture of a Yamaha SHS-10.

I don’t know why I started doing it; I don’t know why I continued. I don’t own a keytar. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a keytar in real life, let alone played one. Keytars are about as relevant to my life as Millard Fillmore. Tracking the origins of my keytar tradition, I think I initially grabbed it purely at random from my mental wordbank to facilitate an article’s surreal tone, then inexplicably decided to call back to it in the

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next issue, then called back to it again in Issue Three, and after that it just felt strange to stop.

Okay, maybe keytars weren’t an entirely random choice. I do genuinely think they are up there with Segway’s and aviator shades as ‘things that are objectively cool, but society simply doesn’t currently accept their true coolness’. The world of the future will be full of people wearing aviator shades playing keytars on Segways, and anyone who disagrees needs to get with the times. (The discontinuation of Segways has obviously hampered their cultural progress slightly. But they’ll be back.)

That said, keytars aren’t a modern idea; indeed, humans have known the power of the keytar for quite some time now, and I don’t mean since the 80s; I mean since the 18th century. Ludwig van Beethoven wrote two pieces of music for keytar. I’m not kidding, he genuinely did. Admittedly it wasn’t called the keytar back then, it was the orphica, a portable handheld piano invented by Carl Leopold Röllig. But the principle was the same.

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And let’s be honest, the Ancient Greeks were miles ahead in technological achievement; they probably invented the keytar ages ago, but then they all got destroyed in the Dark Ages. China, too – the guqin, an ancient Chinese instrument, clearly belongs to the keytar family. Perhaps it predates even them.

You can just envision a Stone Age caveperson hitting an animal bone against several rocks to make different pitches, sticking the rocks to a log using tree resin, and playing ancient sold-out keytar concerts. Now that I think of it, that’s probably what Stonehenge was for!

So really, when I regularly remind us all of the keytar’s existence, I’m reinforcing a cultural tradition that has defined humanity for centuries. Surely George Mattson, who in 1979 created the Syntar, widely considered the first true keytar, must be up there with Johannes Gutenberg and Thomas Edison as one of history’s greatest inventors. Where would we be today without the keytar? Too often we take for granted the combination of synthesised sound and onstage freedom of movement it offers. I seek to restore its power, to place the keytar once again at the heart of human existence.

Somewhere in the centre of the earth rests a sacred temple, carved in ancient stone, yet its inscriptions remain in pristine condition.

The tunnels snake downwards to the inner chamber, a cold stone room, yet one that holds the secret to all life. Three alcoves are set into this sanctum’s back wall, three pedestals displaying the holy trifecta of coolness that fuels corporeal existence, both physically and spiritually. To the left, a pair of RayBan aviators, a mystical light with no known source glinting from their surface. To the right, a Segway i2 SE, rocking slowly back and forth in the winds of time. And in the central alcove, a gold-and-silver Roland AX-7 keytar, encrusted with jewels and relics, eternally powered by the engines of the universe.

Above the alcoves, a short four-bar piece has been chiselled into the stone with great care, as if set there not by human workers but the omnipotent precision of a deity.

I take the keytar from its pedestal, sling its silken strap around my shoulder, and play the notes. It’s the opening riff to Take on Me by A-ha, which didn’t actually use a keytar but is sufficiently synth-infused to carry the weight of this coursing natural energy. As I play each note, cogs behind the chamber walls begin to turn. The room, the temple, the whole earth is changing, reshaping itself. I board the Segway, place the aviators upon the bridge of my nose, and roll back up to the surface. I pick up speed, accelerating with every keytar chord, until I erupt forth from the cavern I first entered in search of life’s answers. A beam of spiritual energy strikes the aviators and elevates the Segway, lets it float in the endless celestial colours and lights of outer space. Around me, I see the faces of our world’s great figures.

George Mattson. Carl Leopold Röllig. The caveperson who first played the rocks-stuckto-a-log. And now I am joining them, as a guardian of the Keytar of Eternity, the Coolest Person on Earth. My life’s mission is achieved.

My apologies, I think I might have got a little bit carried away. It’s astonishing how just a few references to keytars can set you on the path to egocentric self-deification. Don’t worry, I won’t go seeking the temple of the holy trifecta of coolness. Besides, I simply don’t have time to become a god; I have to go to university in a few months’ time. When I said I wanted to move on I didn’t really mean ascending to a different plane of existence.

Still, my faith in the coolness of the keytar has not waned. I still marvel at its ingenuity, appreciate its convenient application in works of absurdist humour. As I mentioned previously, I do not physically own a keytar.

But psychologically, I do. I am one with keytar, forever emotionally fused to its divine music.

Anyway, thanks for reading the BSB Insider, it’s been a great project that I’m proud to have contributed to. I hope you’ve enjoyed it so far, and I look forward to seeing its future, even if that is a future without a regular keytar mention. I don’t know, we’ll see. But from me – goodbye. May your keytars forever be cool.

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Families of BSB

Keeping the flame of community burning brightly Creating a sense of community and building close relationships with the families of students and the wider population beyond the school gates is an intrinsic part of BSB’s philosophy and culture. It is a strongly held belief that providing an inclusive and caring environment helps to nurture a spirit of togetherness and creates an atmosphere in which students can prosper, secure in the knowledge that they and their parents are surrounded by an extensive support network both on and off campus.

Families of BSB (FoBSB), the parents’ association of The British School of Brussels, is at the heart of that support network, providing information and support to help students and their families to get the most from their time at BSB and in Belgium.

Run entirely by parent volunteers, FoBSB organises a wide variety of events, activities, and groups throughout the year and operates Cavell House, the parents centre on campus which hosts language conversation classes, a book club, first aid courses, cookery demonstrations, a craft club, talks, Pilates and more.

The activities of FoBSB, along with the stafforganised events for parents on campus, are of course all geared to make new and existing families feel part of the school community. This inclusivity is rooted in face-to-face interactions;

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the social aspects of support are hugely important when new families arrive in Belgium with little or no knowledge of the country and without any personal contacts.

Understandably, this important aspect of the BSB support structure was affected by the restrictions and regulations of the past two years and, just as with all other parts of school life, FoBSB had to adapt and show great ingenuity and resilience to keep the channels of communication open.

“One of the main challenges during the early part of 2020 was keeping the day-to-day running of FoBSB going as we were unable to organise events during confinement and the volunteer parents found they had much less time as they had kids at home instead of at school,” says Maurits Wesseling, the Families of BSB Chair. “It was a struggle to maintain contact with people and it was harder on some families more than others, especially the newer ones who hadn’t been at the school for long before they had lockdown.”

“It is only natural that some newer families are more introverted to start with when they arrive and we found that these were the ones who were more hesitant to make contact when we had to switch to communicating purely online,” he added. “It is more difficult to help people come out of their shells when you can’t meet them in

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person. So, we know there were a few who had just arrived, were alone and confined in a new home, and were having to home-school from the start – and this was a big challenge, making them feel part of a community that some had not actually physically been part of yet.”

Maurits admits that it was hard to find those people who were struggling the most when all the interaction of the time was through social media and the FoBSB Facebook group, and those who felt uncomfortable with that were reluctant to join in. But slowly and surely FoBSB developed a new way of keeping the spirit of community alive and bringing those new and existing families together.

“We hoped that, despite not having interactions with some people online, they were getting our messages and seeing our updates. It did seem a little strange to post stuff when we were unable to announce events and activities, but we just wanted to keep that channel open. Eventually, when it was possible to get out and organise socially distanced events, we organised a walk around the lake in the Tervuren park and put an invite out via our social media. The response was heart-warming and inspiring. While there were fewer people there than there would be in normal circumstances, we welcomed several families and managed to hold a safe gettogether and finally talk to them, some of them for the first time, about life at BSB.” The park walk was the catalyst for a rejuvenation of the connection between FoBSB and the family community. It sparked a resurgence in events, still mostly held online, and led to more families becoming connected.

“We embraced the fact that we still needed to conduct many things online and so we created a Zoom group and held evening meetings with parents through that,” Maurits says. “We even held a wine tasting evening over Zoom one night who was really fun. We still weren’t getting the same numbers of people joining in as we would have got in normal circumstances, but we were building a momentum which would lead to greater things once the world started to open up.”

Once restrictions began to ease, FoBSB started organising get-togethers with parents on café terraces in Tervuren and eventually brought some on to campus to give some of them the first taste of the school.

“When the situation started to change, I spoke with Melanie (Warnes, the school Principal) and we both decided that our focus should be on bringing the community back to life and integrating new families,” says Maurits.

“So, we started to tentatively organise events within the regulations, such as the car boot sale on campus - which wasn’t on a massive scale, but it was a nice get together. People had the opportunity to connect, to buy and sell some stuff. That was actually quite a good turnout. We also started hosting regular coffee mornings in Cavell House again and then, more recently, we managed to finally hold the Summer Ball at the Africa Museum which was a tremendous success with a record number of people attending. It was clear by then that people wanted to let their hair down.”

Other events that really capped a successful return were the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations held in March this year, plus the families’ tea party on campus and the Quiz Night event in May. One of the strongest examples of FoBSB and the community of BSB working together, shoulder to shoulder, was the BSB response to the refugee crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

With so many young people and children among the refugees, ensuring their continuing education soon became a principal factor for schools in host countries such as Belgium.

It wasn’t long before BSB started to receive requests from students and relatives of children that had arrived in Belgium from Ukraine, asking if they could be considered for a place at the school. From the moment the first emails arrived, discussions at the highest level of the school began about how BSB could help and accommodate these students.

It became clear that BSB as a whole had to do something. The school’s guiding statements say that we strive to be an educational force for good. There was an overwhelming sense that this was a situation in which our values would come first, that everyone at BSB would do everything in their power to help those in need.

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In total BSB has taken in over 50 students from Ukraine. Some are being hosted by families already attached to the school, others by staff members. Some students are living with alumni or relatives of graduates, and some are staying with family members of those who are already at BSB. All school fees have been waived, a decision that was immediately and unanimously agreed at the Board of Governors level.

While BSB as a school moved swiftly to accept Ukrainian students, the wider community was also quickly mobilised to provide external support.

The BSB community’s response to the crisis was overwhelmingly inspiring at such a challenging time, with families making room in their own homes to house Ukrainians escaping the conflict, and people of all ages volunteering and donating to ease their plight.

With many arriving in Belgium with very little but the small amounts of possessions they could fit into a backpack, the school and the wider BSB community pulled together to provide

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the Ukrainian students and their families with everything they needed to begin a new life and to feel settled.

“When we realised the scope of the crisis, we knew we had to do something,” says Maurits.

“We immediately launched our Ukraine appeal for the community to donate goods.

Within a day or so we had about 40 people in a WhatsApp group organising and planning collections of donations. We built up a whole logistical network of collections, deliveries and people at the school sorting the items.”

Indeed, the whole community swung into action, with people donating money, clothes, bicycles, toys, and even musical instruments.

The objective was to give the Ukrainian families security to be themselves again and feel safe in their lives.

As Maurits says, “No one at BSB and in our BSB community will feel alone or disengaged, we will reach them and support them because that is the essence of what we are and what we do.”

TAPESTRY Magazine n°9 • 2022

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TAPESTRY Magazine n°9 • 2022

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BSB Insider

‘Mental health and the case against exams’ Here, Matej – one of our Press Room writers – talks about the mental health challenges surrounding exams in this opinion piece*.

By now it is common wisdom that our education system is the offspring of the industrial era’s demand for trained and obedient workers.

Despite notable improvements in conditions and methods, education continues to serve the same societal role as it did back then. It should come as no surprise that a system with this as a foundational basis is overbearing and stressful for students of all kinds. No offender is worse in this regard than the standard examination.

The statistics are clear. In recent years reported mental health issues as a result of examinations have been rising. Hope Line UK, a confidential support hotline for young people, has seen a quadruple increase in contacts from students and parents since 2013. In the UK in 2018, 23.2% of students reported that anxiety impacted them and 15.4% reported that depression impacted them.

This increase is partly attributed to the fact that people are now more willing to speak about mental health issues, however, it also correlates with greater exam pressure on the student population.

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The most blatant example of this is a pure increase in exam time. Students sitting exams in 2019, on average, faced 9 hours more exam time than those sitting in 2016. Less obviously however, competition between students has also raised the standards to which they are held, something which has been a decades ongoing process. From 1985 to 2013, the percentage of students who scored an “A” increased from some 30% to nearly 50%. This has led to a sort of grade inflation where higher scores become oversaturated, and students are pushed into ever tighter upper grades. A corresponding decrease in coursework hasn’t helped either, as an ever-greater percentage of a student’s grade is determined by exams. All of these factors conspire to make examinations, and preparing for them, a truly demanding experience.

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Unsurprisingly, I am not the first person to have noticed the dire state of student mental welfare. Schools across the world have noted an alarming quantity of mental health problems. The standard response has been to try and improve their mental welfare infrastructure, providing counselling and attempting to create a culture of openness about mental health. Tens of millions have been used to fund information campaigns, to provide students with study support and to fuel countless other initiatives.

While the impact of these campaigns can be demonstrated statistically, and they are undoubtedly preferable to inaction, the mental welfare of the student population continues to decline year by year.

Some experts now think that the focus on alleviating the symptoms of stressful examinations is unproductive, and that stress should never have been put on the student population in the first place. Their ideas falter however, because what could possibly be the alternative? Many of us simply can’t imagine a system that doesn’t push us beyond our limits and classify us systematically based on examination scores. Anyone who argues against the system then is nothing more than an idealist.

That is why it may surprise you to know that not all corners of the world suffer from this crisis of mental health. In Finland, 15-year-old teenagers reported the highest “life satisfaction” and lowest stress of any European country, followed closely by Switzerland. The Finnish system of schooling produces some of the best results in the world, and it achieves all of it with minimal burden on the students.

Finland uses a system of examination called “low stakes testing”, in that grades are rarely determined by just one exam, if at all. They have flexible school days, significantly less homework and a much more self-directed style of learning. Their school grades are therefore determined over a long period of time, based on their work in class. Even then, they are not as emphasised as they are in Western Europe. A student’s main duty in a Finnish school is indisputably to learn, whereas for us there is a definite conflict between student curiosity and the content of examinations.

Should we imitate the Finnish system then?

Well, yes. It’s statistically superior to our own in nearly every way. But just saying “burn the system” and leaving the room, refusing to elaborate, does nothing to combat rapidly declining student mental health. What we can achieve right now is informing ourselves about these problems and their existing solutions and expect that those ideas will pass onto the education boards of the future.

With enough work, we can only hope that our education system will seem as backwards to children of the future as the factory schools of the 1800s seem to us today. *Opinion is student’s own.

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Students in action

Working together for a better, more equal world Our goal at BSB is to create young adults who rise to the challenge of the modern world.

Sadly, some of those challenges put the planet and its inhabitants at risk. This reality, however, has only inspired our students to take responsibility and subsequently take action.

Rather than considering it to be someone else’s problem, our students have mobilised in groups across a range of campaigns and causes to rise these challenges and to strive to make a difference.

Part of our school philosophy deals with the concept of nurturing global awareness among our students while developing confident, caring and courageous people. Guided by our dedicated staff, our students are encouraged to engage actively, ethically and purposefully with the world around them.

Over the past two years, BSB students have shown all these qualities in numerous examples of student agency in action, and in most cases going beyond that which was expected of them. Here are some of the highlights from two years of student activism and agency in the areas of sustainability, humanitarianism and social consciousness.

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One of the main drivers of student change on campus is the Global Issues Network (GIN) group, BSB’s chapter of the international organisation which empowers young people to create positive change in the world.

Among several campaigns our GIN group has been running, the main one over the last two years has concentrated on raising of awareness of sanitary poverty.

Sanitary – or period – poverty refers to the lack of access to sanitary products, menstrual hygiene education, toilets, hand washing facilities, and/or waste management.

Recognising that period poverty is also a widespread issue in Belgium, two Year 12 students, Ava and Justina, decided to collect period products within the BSB community and donate them to homeless shelters in Brussels.

Over 3,000 products have been collected to date.

“Period poverty is a pervasive issue, yet people rarely discuss it,” said Justina. “The reasons behind this lack of action stem from the stigma and shame of periods and the female reproductive system in general. This ignorance about menstruation has many damaging effects but, arguably most importantly, it prevents governmental action from being taken to resolve this urgent issue.”

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Justina, along with the BSB Global Initiatives Network (GIN) group, went even further and began campaigning for free period products to be provided in the school toilets. This has since been approved and the plan is to use vending machines to distribute the products to students free of charge. Until the products are available in the vending machines, they are provided in baskets in Secondary School.

In addition, ‘PadAid’, one of BSB’s GIN groups, reached the semi-final of the Global Social Leaders competition in May 2022 and will have their work showcased at the GSL Festival in June. With 500 teams entering form 106 countries around the world, this is a massive achievement for the students involved in PadAid. This follows on from a similar achievement in May 2020 when the original Sanitary Poverty group demonstrated great resilience during the first period of confinement to write their Global Social Leaders report and create their

project video under difficult circumstances.

Their efforts were rewarded with a semi-final placing and the courage commendation for tackling a taboo subject.

Another incredible story of student action and agency took place in the summer of 2020 when GIN members Lea and Silvia overcame the obstacles of lockdown to defeat global fast food chain McDonald’s on the school’s very doorstep.

“It all started, when I was contacted by the Families of BSB at the start of the summer holidays in July 2020 about how McDonald’s wanted to secure the free plot of land next to the Carrefour supermarket almost directly opposite the school,” said Charlotte Lemaitre, the GIN coordinator at BSB.

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“I was approached about starting a GIN group petition but as it was just at the start of the holidays, I was not that optimistic,” she said.

“I reached out to Lea and Silvia out of hope and the girls’ response was amazing. Within 24 hours they had created an online petition and I was astounded by the reaction.”

Within just over two weeks, the girls had gained over 2,300 signatures and Lea was back from France being interviewed and featuring on local TV and radio. Eventually, after submitting the petition to the local authorities, McDonald’s then withdrew its plans and ended its interest in the site.

The ‘Catering for All’ day’ finally took place on the 27 January, and it was a great success with more students than usual choosing the main courses.

Another major campaign instigated by students on campus is the on-going push for the reduction of single use plastic.

Elsewhere, the ‘Catering for All’ campaign, led by Year 13 student Emily, was launched in January 2022 with the aim of making the school’s cafeteria options more inclusive.

The campaign began before the pandemic hit and was resurrected in early 2022. Students from all year groups and classes were asked by their teachers to think about which issues, they felt were the most important and challenging. The children created posters based on their ideas, which were then presented to the Student Councillors. After a Student Council meeting in which these posters were considered by the attending Councillors and teachers, a common topic was identified: there was an overwhelming passion throughout the school community for the reduction of plastic use in the school and, specifically, in the cafeteria.

The group involved in the campaign surveyed over 200 students about cafeteria options.

The survey revealed 48% of vegetarians never eat in the cafeteria and while 75% of vegans never eat in the cafeteria. 37% of students felt the cafeteria didn’t offer enough veggie options and 56% felt the cafeteria didn’t offer enough vegan options.

“The Student Council then came up with the idea of a badge which students and teachers who support the ‘say no to plastic’ initiative could wear,” said Primary teacher Laura Sanderson, one of the staff coordinators along with colleague Emma Kedzierski. “We then set about organising a competition to design a badge.”

The group shared the results with Vice Principal Neil Ringrose and requested a ‘Catering for All’ day’ in the cafeteria.

The students used wood and synthetic glue to make their badges, and a prototype of the winning design from Student Councillor Saanvi was created in February and the first badges were sold at a badge and cake sale on Wednesday 4th May by the Student Councillors. The sale raised over 630 euros for the Student Council’s chosen charity, Friends of the Earth.

Lea and Silvia were subsequently awarded a COBIS award for their contributions to the wider school community.

They then invited vegetarians and vegans to attend a lunchtime meeting. The aim of the meeting was to design a successful menu which ‘Catered for All’. Over 25 students turned up and shared their favourite dishes.

The group then met with our wonderful catering teams and proposed a special day.

They also shared the suggested dishes.

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Another competition was launched earlier in the year to create a short video, infomercial or advert to try to convince students and staff at the school (and everyone in the outside world, in fact) to not buy plastic. The joint winners of the competition were Helen in class 4L, and a collaboration between 5R students: Maya, Julie, Tabitha and Filippa. The winning videos were shown in the Upper Primary School Assembly in March 2022.

BSB students have also joined forces to tackle a different type of rubbish by devising and leading a campaign to tackle technological waste on campus.

“As a school we are very fortunate with our technological assets and our vast access to technology across all age groups at our school,” said Kheya, one of the student leaders of the campaign. “However, this easily leads to the problem of technological waste, which is a problem that we face. This year, we decided to tackle this problem whilst also aiming to help youth across Belgium who face digital poverty, a problem which unexpectedly came to light during the period in which many had to study and work from home.

The student group partnered with Close the Gap, an international social enterprise that aims to bridge the global digital divide, and their partner organisation, Digital for Youth, whose main focus is to reduce the gap in Belgium.

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“After a lot of research and internal discussion with members of leadership at BSB, we managed to form an agreement which will see our school recycle our technological waste sustainably, as well as donating our spare resources to those who need it the most in Belgium,” concluded Kheya.

It was the latest event in a longstanding collaboration between the school and Special Olympics Belgium. The ‘Play Unified’ campaign was launched in 2016 and was introduced with the aim of connecting 20,000 people with intellectual disabilities with partners in sports clubs and federations all over Belgium.

In addition, in March of 2022, after a two-year hiatus, the annual BSB and Special Olympics Belgium ‘Play Unified’ Swimming Gala finally took place with local swimming clubs, Special Olympians and BSB athletes all taking part in BSB’s state-of-the-art pool on a family-friendly day. Athletes did not only come together to swim and enjoy the awards ceremony, but also to show off their dancing skills and enjoy a meal together.

BSB has enjoyed a longstanding relationship with Special Olympics Belgium for over 25 years, based on a shared philosophy and the values of solidarity, respect and integration.

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The 2022 event saw about 25 swimmers from BSB volunteers to compete alongside the Special Olympic Athletes at the gala, covering every age group of the school’s Swimming teams. The races took place over short distances – 25 and 50m – in the basic strokes, and there were also relay races with mixed teams comprising BSB and Special Olympics swimmers.

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“Play United is a programme within the Special Olympics movement to allow for athletes with disabilities to compete with other athletes as equals,” said Coordinator Luc De Groote, the lead teacher for the event. “For this to be a success all need to show empathy, respect and enthusiasm. Our student athletes showed these virtues so well they created a perfect atmosphere for excellent performances.”

In addition to sporting events such as the ‘Play Unified’ gala, BSB students have shown great empathy, enthusiasm and motivation in their willingness to engage proactively beyond the school gates and tackle important issues.

This is just a small selection of the campaigns and initiatives carried out by our hugely active students. Each year, more and more students join our groups with a desire to do some good and make change a reality. Their continued commitment to their chosen causes is highly admirable and a source of great pride at BSB, as is the tireless work of those teachers and staff that work with and support them.

Together, we will continue to work towards our goal of being an educational force for good in the world.

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BSB’s healthy green heart

Sustainability and the whole school culture As the planet finds itself in a seemingly out-of-control climate crisis, society needs eco-innovation and a sustainable focus more than ever before.

As educators, BSB staff have embraced the responsibility of sustainability education with a focus on producing eco-conscious, selfsufficient world citizens who understand the immediacy of the challenges they and their planet face.

Sustainability is the key to a better future: a future our students will be expected to live in and therefore take responsibility for. As such, sustainability is an important topic to study even if you aren’t an environmental science student, which is why it has become important in every part of the BSB curriculum.

Our approach to sustainability education is based on the fact that it encompasses all school subjects and extends far beyond the classroom. BSB’s aim is to provide our students with real-world skills and the selfsufficiency they need to improve the planet while offering them a deep understanding of why the environment is important.

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Last year we introduced the role of Sustainability Champions at BSB. This was in line with the recommendation of the UK’s Department for Education which is focused on embedding sustainability in school curriculums and cultures. One area of this strategy is to have at least one person responsible for sustainability in every educational institution from 2023 onwards.

The initiative has been embraced, not only in the UK but across Europe, with many European schools following the directive.

“We as a school were already thinking about creating such a role before this strategy was announced so we weren’t necessarily reacting to that when the position of Sustainability Champion was created as part of our Enrichment programme,” said Kate Ringrose, one of BSB’s two Sustainability Champions. “This came about as a direct result of responding to our whole school development plan and guiding statements as well as a louder global message raised by students across the world including ours.”

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The members of staff and two students were charged with helping to raise the profile of sustainability and environmental education and coordinate all the activities and initiatives that were happening across the school.

“Charlie (Phillips, our other Sustainability Champion) and I, along with two student representatives, looked at everything going on in terms of sustainability across the school and discussed ways we could bring them all together.”

“Our first job was to create an audit to find out what we were doing well and where we were able to improve. This enabled us to focus on what we were already doing and where the gaps were – so we filled them. This initiative has taken place throughout the majority of 2022.”

The overview showed that BSB actively teaches sustainability and environmental education from our youngest children in our Early childhood centre, our Primary school and all the way through secondary school to our eldest Year 13 students.

In addition, there is the Global Issues Network, a thriving group of students who tirelessly raise awareness and money for several global issues. Students run our fairtrade tuck shop and regularly have bake sales and book sales to raise money for a variety of charities.

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All our students in the Primary School take part in regular Outdoor Learning lessons twice every term. Their work is directly connected to the learning in the classroom.

Year 6 complete their Foresters Award at the end of each year.

On top of that, the BSBees, our whole school Eco Club, is one of the largest clubs in the school with over 50 students attending each week. They maintain the school gardens, care for the animals, raise awareness of global issues, learn from and about nature and check every class is doing all they can for the environment to win the prestigious weekly Golden Boot award.

What was clear from the start was that bringing all these amazing initiatives and projects together under the Sustainability umbrella was going to take a collaborative effort.

“We are all working together towards a common goal,” said Kate. “When we could see what was happening around campus, in all parts of the school, we approached everyone: we talked to Esther (O’Connor, Team Leader Primary), we grabbed Paul Christmas, the Secondary Department Leader for Geography, we talked to the whole of the Geography department actually; the outdoor learning team; science, food technology - everyone. Let’s come together, we said, and do it all together.”

In the short few months that followed, huge steps were taken to link and embed existing and new projects throughout the school, with students taking an active lead. Thanks to a whole school student survey, a huge wild garden has been created with students from Primary to Secondary helping our gardeners plant it full of trees and wild flowers.

“The garden gives us the opportunity to not just talk about nature and learn about it from a book but go out there and actually do it,” said Kate. “The Wild Garden, with its dedicated play area, waters features, wildflowers and willow tunnel, is really lovely and forms part of our plan for a green corridor which will eventually link every part of the school through nature, another green aspect of our campus development plan.”

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Additionally, BSB has formed links with the local Transition Network in our community and joined forces with other local schools to create a conference. This will ultimately lead to students creating climate policy to be considered for local parliament.

The collaborative effort to create a whole school focus on sustainability also fed into an initiative that was placed at the heart of the role the Sustainability Champions took on: to raise the profile of Sustainability and environmental education at BSB and win Eco Schools status within one school year.

The Eco Schools programme encourages young people to engage in their environment by allowing them the opportunity to actively protect it. Through this programme, young people experience a sense of achievement at being able to have a say in the environmental management policies of their schools, ultimately steering them towards certification and the prestige which comes with being awarded a Green Flag, an international accreditation that has recognised and rewarded young people’s environmental actions for over 25 years.

All the hard work was rewarded in May 2022 when the school was awarded the prestigious Eco-School status after completing an intensive programme of activities and target achievement, and successfully navigating an on-site interview by representatives of the organisation who praised BSB’s “very impressive” efforts.

“This is really quite a big deal actually,” said Kate. “Eco Schools is the largest and oldest recognition of education for sustainable development globally and we appear to be the first international school in Belgium to have been awarded this status.”

After the two representatives of the EcoSchool Committee visited the school to conduct the final assessment, the school was awarded the Green Flag, an international accreditation that has recognised and rewarded young people’s environmental actions for over 25 years and BSB was officially given the status of an Eco School.

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“We are very proud to be given the Green Flag,” said Kate. “The flag acknowledges the work of all involved and puts the students firmly in the driving seat for initiatives that untimately benefit the whole school community.”

By becoming an Eco-School, BSB has taken a further step on a meaningful path towards improving the environmental footprint of the school, a change which will inevitably leads to a more sustainable, more responsible and less costly school environment. It also brings BSB into an international community of participating institutions and provides the school with an opportunity to share environmental information, and cultural exchanges with other Eco-Schools all over the world.

“We are not only honoured to be awarded the prestigious Eco School status, which is just reward for all the hard work our students and teachers have put into their sustainability projects, but we are also immensely proud of all those involved,” said Neil Ringrose, Head of Primary and one of the Vice-Principals at BSB. “Our community at BSB strive to be an educational force for good and one aspect of that is to develop confident, caring and courageous people who engage actively, ethically and purposefully with the world around us. Our students have shown these qualities by exhibiting a deep respect for the environment and an understanding of how their actions can help protect the planet, while encouraging others to do so too.”

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Outdoor education Getting to grips with nature

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The great outdoors

Campus development at BSB In April 2021, BSB’s Board of Governors approved an ambitious, exciting, and optimistic masterplan for the future development of the school campus. The first phases envisioned in the plan are a new cafeteria and significant improvements to the accommodation for our Early Childhood Centre (ECC) and the Tintin building. The most significant parts of the plan referred to the development of the outdoor facilities at BSB. As part of the school’s commitment to outdoor learning, the outdoor space next to the new sports pitches was designated as a future green zone, a more natural space with plenty of opportunity for adventurous play in nature.

This would complement beautifully the other green areas on the campus. Ideas for what the new area would contain and could look like were submitted by students from across the whole school, from Early Years to Post 16.

Directly related to this planned long-term investment in the improvement of the BSB estate the Board also decided to sell the Bijlkensveld Fields in Tervuren. With the completion of the Sports Pitches on campus, the school no longer required the Bijlkensveld Fields for curriculum activity. The Board’s intention was to invest all proceeds from the sale in the planned improvements to the learning environment and opportunities for students.

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“Part of the reason BSB continues to be successful is that we always looking forward – asking ourselves questions such as what will our students need in the future? What are the challenges and opportunities and how can we make our dreams reality for the next generation?” says Melanie Warnes, BSB Principal. “We know that the environment within which we live and learn is really important. We have a wonderful campus in a beautiful setting, but we know that we must continue to invest in the development of the highest quality in order to ensure that current and future students enjoy a great education and healthy lifestyle.”

“There is a fundamental need in all of us to be outside,” says Esther O’Connor, Team Leader in Primary. She points out that there is a strong link between wellbeing and spending time outdoors and, besides this, there is huge scope for children’s development outside the four walls of the classroom, both socially and academically.

“The idea about developing outdoor learning opportunities for all age groups was based on the need for a multipurpose area which would promote physical play and the development of gross motor skills,” said Esther O’Connor.

“We have been thinking deeply about how to use the school’s outdoor spaces even more to enhance creativity, risk-taking, teamwork and independent thought.”

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As part of a project on the outdoor campus, the Creativity, Action and Service (CAS) group in Global Issues Network (GIN) worked on evaluating student use of the outdoor areas. Interestingly this coincided with the challenging work of the Board of Governors which was at the time also looking at longer term campus development. So, it was really valuable that student involvement could be integrated right from the beginning.

GIN students observed primary play and surveyed students on how they saw outdoor space. The surveys revealed a number of key findings. “Firstly, children play in many different ways, including active sport, structured and unstructured games as well quiet activities,” says Paul Christmas, Department Leader Geography. “There is

also lots of learning in play, especially around loose parts and nature. What seemed clear was that the outdoor space didn’t always recognise this or provide the type of space and resources these activities needed.”

Another key finding was the need for more natural space, where students could relax, enjoy quiet time as well as closer intimacy with nature. With this in mind, the Wild Garden emerged, and students and staff were again closely involved, supporting the Leadership, especially in the initial phases.

The garden offers lots of opportunities to play and discover. A wooden play structure, mounds, and landforms to encourage vigorous exploring and exercise, while integrated water features are both a chance

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to splash and have fun, and an interactive educational resource to support scientific studies and collaboration.

In addition, the arching willow stems create living tunnels and dens, while wildflower beds are an attractive invitation to wildlife such as bees, birds, and butterflies.

“The obstacle course promotes physical development, and safe risk taking – all whilst building courage and resilience,” says Esther. “The water investigation area has many elements such as an Archimedes screw to collect water. It has been designed in a way to create opportunities for critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration.

The children can stop the flow of water with different functions. We hope this water space will be a great way to encourage problem solving, develop language and promote teamwork.”

Adjacent to the water space, is a circular mud area in which the children can embrace the joy of mud through experimenting with digging, and moulding during play. This provides many opportunities to increase curiosity.

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“The garden gives us the opportunity to not just talk about nature and learn about it from a book but go out there and actually do it,” says Kate Ringrose. “The wild garden with its dedicated play area, waters features, wildflowers and willow tunnel is really lovely and forms part of our plan for a green corridor which will eventually link every part of the school through nature.”

In addition, there have been several other student and staff-led developments in the forest area of the school. The forest has been opened up to allow easier student access, with plans to create enhanced spaces for biodiversity and outdoor learning.

A really positive outcome that is emerging from campus development is the integration of students and staff participation in long-term planning processes. By creating space for different voices in the development process, BSB builds trust and sense of ownership which are so important for long term success of the outdoor space.

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BSB Insider ‘The geography of climate change’ Here, Sophie – one of our Press Room writers – addresses the serious issue of the current climate emergency.

The year 2022 began in much same way as many other recent one, with the planet facing yet another uncertain year. It seems to be a recurring theme: humanity manages to minimise the weight of our past mistakes with the devastation of our new ones.

Unfortunately, this does very little to lessen the urgency of the issues we face, a major one of these being the climate crisis.

Last October saw the conclusion of the highly anticipated 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), widely dubbed a failure due to the lack of a substantial outcome following nearly two weeks of discussion. Though progress was made, with the finalisation of rules concerning emission reporting and carbon trading as well as agreements to “phase-down” the use of coal and prevent deforestation, many activists still had qualms about the pace at which change was being carried out by the world’s governments. The ambitions of the previous summit, the 2015 Paris Accords, were far from on track, with the target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C by 2030 seeming further

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out of reach than ever before. Generally, the main fault of COP26 lay in the inability of its participants to enforce crucial change; the climate crisis requires radical action, so why not act radically?

Unfortunately, things are not so straightforward. There are several reasons why our governments are hesitant to take the initiative, the majority of which are economic: the financial burden of decarbonising, resourcing renewable energy, and restricting major corporation production, is simply too much to shoulder. This, at least, is what most Western nations claim to be the impediment to change; however, such a sentiment is not exactly reflective of reality. The cost of sustainable technology is constantly dropping, it is now cheaper -and easierthan ever to reduce emissions. It is entirely possible to stimulate economic prosperity whilst keeping emissions in decline; however, this only remains true as long as we have enough time to implement change. The closer we edge to the end of the century, the more difficult it becomes to tackle the multiplying consequences of global warming. If we continue to waste time, the damage caused by the crisis will become infinitely more expensive to reverse than the crisis itself.

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The issue here lies in the geography of climate change. From the torrential flooding across Western Europe to the incessant droughts that torment the Sahara, there is no denying that climate change does not discriminate: we have all fallen victim to the consequences of humanity’s choices.

That being said, it is an undeniable fact that developing nations face the brunt of the crisis, with regional, economic, and political faults heavily influencing the gravity of its impact. This is evident when looking at India, which is currently facing the risk of a water crisis, a threat that is exacerbated by the nation’s struggling economy, high population and infrastructure issues. While a developed nation may be able to avoid the tipping point of such a crisis, developing countries do not have the financial capacity to correct it; a problem that is worsened by the decline of water resources caused by global warming.

It is clear that Europe and North America do not share this sense of urgency, caused by the culmination of geographical and economic factors, when facing the climate crisis. There is less to incentivise Western nations to take financial action; less to instil pressure on their governments. Yet it is Western industries that play a leading role in accelerating the crisis: fossil fuel corporations like Shell and BP account for over 70% of the world’s global emissions, and Western consumers continue to use their products despite knowing the consequences. I cannot stress enough how important it is to stop being complicit in this.

We must acknowledge our contribution to the climate crisis as individuals and take responsibility for our actions as a society.

Another aspect of climate change to consider is that most developing nations cannot be held responsible for it yet are forced to bear the ramifications. For example, the Philippines only contributes to 0.35% of the world’s yearly carbon emissions, yet suffers immensely from increasingly frequent typhoons, floods, and landslides caused by climate change.

The region is highly susceptible to natural disasters due to its geographical position in the world’s most cyclone-prone area and is also at risk of other threats such as rising sea levels. This geographical vulnerability, when paired with the nation’s economic constraints, means the Philippines will endure the force of climate change at a much higher intensity than most other countries. The same notion applies to other developing Southeast Asian, African, and island nations.

Tapestry • 67

Perception, exposure and reaction

By Crystal George

The cover design for this edition of Tapestry was created

by BSB student Crystal, who revealed to us the inspiration behind her End of Year show and gave us some insight into her influences as an artist.

My final show comprised pieces shaped around the themes of “Perception, Exposure and Reaction”, which reflect the times we live in and the social and psychological changes in society perceived as a consequence of the pandemic.

With my work, I aim to challenge the concept of aesthetics in art. I was inspired by Baumgarten, a German philosopher, who associated aesthetics to signify a stimulation of our human senses rather than the contemporary idea of Art having to be a piece of beauty. Therefore, when producing work, I always hope that it can impact the viewer to connect to something more than the image itself.

With art having always been an important outlet for me, I am grateful for the opportunities and support I have had in developing this at BSB.

68 • The British School of Brussels

TAPESTRY Magazine n°9 • 2022

Magazine n°9 • 2022

Publisher

Melanie Warnes

Editor

Nick Amies

Production Manager

Carrie Stacchini

Contributors

Matej Bavec, Helen Beck, Paul Christmas, Tristian Cook, Maarten Couttenier, Huw Downing, Martin Gausseran, Crystal George, Nicola Gough, Luc De Groote, Clare Gunns, Emma Kedzierski, John Knight, Charlotte Lemaitre, Sophie Lindy, Christi-Ann Nancarrow, Amanda Nocera, Linda Ochsenmeier, Esther O’Connor, Adam Pickard, Charlie Phillips, Harriet Powell, Kate Ringrose, Neil Ringrose, Laura Sanderson, Ceri Seymour, Kheya Sinha, Jessica Southward, Nikolaus van der Pas, Tom Vuerinckx, Maurits Wesseling, Jane Whitehouse, Lieven Willems.

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18/08/2022