Church vicar praises Shirebrook Academy students' handiwork as 'a thing of beauty'

Thomas Bates, Simon Dosanjh, Nathan Buckingham and Ethan Poole with the new noticeboard they made for Holy Trinity Church in Shirebrook.

A vicar has praised Shirebrook Academy students for creating ‘a thing of beauty’ after they put their woodworking skills to good use.

The pupils built and installed a new noticeboard outside the town’s Holy Trinity Parish Church to keep parishioners in the know.

Church vicar, the Rev Karen Bradley, said: “We had a noticeboard installed previously, but it was certainly past its sell-by-date and a bit of an eyesore. Hopefully the new noticeboard will be used more than the previous one was.

“I want to thank the students for all of their hard work, it was such a wonderful thing for them to do for us, a real blessing, and it’s brilliant to see the students discovering how the things they learn at school apply to the community.”

The students took on the task as part of their practical foundation studies, assisted by design technology teachers Simon Dosanjh and Simon Langrick, who guided them through the process, from building the noticeboard out of wood and then sanding and staining it.

They then visited the church to put it into position.

Student Thomas Bates, 15, said: “I really enjoyed doing something different for the community and helping people out, but it was also cold installing the notice board and getting it level was a challenge.”

Claire Armstrong, head of design technology at Shirebrook Academy, said: “It was really nice as a department to do something practical and contribute to the community.

“We’re in the midst of really uncertain times, because social distancing rules means we can’t do as much practical work as usual, but this project was able to go ahead and allowed us to give something back to the parish after they generously donated some bibles to the school’s philosophy and ethics department.”

On the church’s Facebook page, Rosalie Scott commented: “Well done Shirebrook Academy."

Like other churches, the Holy Trinity buildiing is not open for worship to help the fight against the spread of coronavirus.

The church has used online resources to connect with its parishioners including a Zoom meeting to build Christingles and its Facebook page to raise money for Shirebrook community support project BLAST by auctioning off a Kevin the Carrot toy.