On Thursday 3 November 2016, we were lucky enough to welcome a group of 15 children from Newnham Croft Primary School, their teacher Jo Turner and two school gardeners (Alan and Veronica) to the Raised Faculty Building. The children at Newnham Croft are extremely well-versed in green matters and we thought we should get to know them and find out what they could teach us about improving the bio-diversity of our environment. We've launched a competition for children at the school to design something that will make a real difference to our environment.

The children, who are members of the school's Eco Committee and also some keen Key Stage 2 gardeners, came along to visit the site, take some photographs and listen to our design brief. We had a fantastic couple of hours taking a look round, discussing initial ideas and even had a sneaky walk around gardens at Selwyn College looking for some inspiration. The children had lots of fantastic ideas, and even thought about incorporating a language element into their plans, either by using quotes from literature about plants and nature, or by using plants from areas where the languages we teach are spoken. It was a lovely afternoon.

The children who came will give an assembly and launch the competition on Thursday 10 November and all entries must be in by 2 December 2016. The MML Green Impact Team will then judge the entries and the winner will receive the 'Nan Taplin Award for Green Initiative'.

There will be a second competition in early 2017 for children in the lower school years to redesign our environmental awareness posters. Crucially, the children will be asked to produce their posters in one of the languages we teach and we look forward to having lots of lovely art work in the building next year.