Ackworth ACORNS TO OAKS
Rachel Belk, Development and Engagement Manager
News from the Potting Shed
I am so excited to be writing this first edition of Ackworth Acorns to Oaks, our termly newsletter about development activities in school. I have had a hugely stimulating first six months as part of the Ackworth staff team. My role, as Development and Engagement Manager, is a new one for school. I am extremely pleased personally to have taken up this responsibility, but even more pleased for school: the post gives us capacity to develop our networks with Old Scholars and previous staff, but also with parents, the Quaker community, the village community and everyone who has a past or current relationship with Ackworth School.
News from the Potting Shed
The positivity around what we are achieving as a community is enormous in so many areas: we were proud to demonstrate the school’s teaching, learning and pastoral strengths during the ISI inspection in January, pleased to discuss how our Quaker values are embedded throughout our school life during our voluntary inspection in December, and honoured to have our inclusive learning recognised in January through the IFIP Global Inclusion Award. This positivity extends to our development plans: ambitious but pragmatic, recognising the stormy economic seas that all schools are navigating currently.
We are balancing the priorities for my role between the need to build strong foundations, and the wish to hit the ground running, launch and refresh long-anticipated projects. Our 250th anniversary is just three years
away and we are very aware that a development and fundraising programme takes time to build momentum. We have started from a position of strength given the huge number of existing initiatives in teaching, extracurricular, Old Scholar-led and partnerships: the development task is to act as an additional catalyst in enabling and in linking these initiatives together.
To put strong foundations in place, we are embedding a new digital platform to support our development work. This will help us communicate more effectively, manage events, facilitate giving, and provide a dedicated online space for our growing development activity alongside the main school website.
You can explore our fledgling development website here: development.ackworthschool. com and via the QR code. From the homepage, you can access further information about the projects highlighted in this newsletter. Please do keep checking back, as content is being updated regularly and will provide the latest progress on our initiatives.
Alongside this, we are continuing to grow our Old Scholars mailing list. We began with around 400 contacts and have now exceeded 500, but we know there are many more to reconnect with. We encourage you to share your details and contact preferences using the link on the website.
Why the gardening and trees analogy?
I think it works visually and I hope you agree! Ackworth’s very name has evolved from Oakworth, and there are few ideas more evocative of potential, sustainability and longevity than an acorn’s growth over centuries. Couple that with the thousands of trees in our stunning gardens and grounds, and the importance to us of wise stewardship of our planet’s resources, and it feels fitting.
I bring together here, and on the website, the projects that Ackworth School’s community have supported and that have recently borne fruit, those early projects that are currently blossoming and those that are in full growth right now. Each project’s size and stage is represented by trees of varied sizes (apple, horse chestnut, oak) and time of year (spring, summer, autumn). The image above shows the importance of all our projects being aligned to, and in sympathy with, the Quaker testimonies.
We launched a school podcast last term and, through this QR code, I share my recent Morning Meeting Address where I explain the analogy and talk to our current pupils about ‘keeping bright the chain’.
To stay with this image, we have spent these first six months doing the heavy digging and turning over of the soil that prepares the ground for ongoing contact with our old scholars, parents and staff and improves communication. Thank you for bearing with us during this set-up period as we want to set off at a sprint, but need the preparation so everything is in place for sustainable growth.
In between the heavy digging, I’ve had many metaphorical and real cups of tea ‘in the potting shed’, really the Visitors Room, Vestibule Study or other quiet corner, with staff, retired staff, Old Scholars, Members of School Committee, Quakers from outside school and others with Ackworth’s interests at heart. Lots of seeds have been planted, more to be put in the ground, but now we are watering, weeding and deciding which seedlings to nurture…
Please do get in touch to help shape the plans to mark where we have come from, celebrate what we stand for and develop what we offer to our future pupils, our communities and all of us that love Ackworth School.
I will finish with a few words about me as my face may be familiar to some. I have been a Member of School Committee and Deputy Clerk, and am an Old Scholar from 1982-89. It occurred to me as I started that I had left after ‘A’ levels aged 18 and was walking back through the door as a member of staff exactly double the length of time later - 36 years!
Fothergill Hall Seating
We start with a priority project that is blossoming right now and where we would really welcome your support.
We made great progress in our Fothergill Hall seating campaign up to Christmas, reaching our first target of £10,000 to secure the quote at last year’s prices. We are now over £17,000, but still have two-thirds of the way to go to our £56,000 target. Reaching this by Celebration Day at the end of June 2026 will allow us to install the seating over the summer holiday and launch the revitalised theatre by Founders’ Day, exactly a year after the project was launched.
The 224 seats will be replaced with modern, comfortable tip-up seating, including a removable front row for flexible wheelchair spaces or additional floor space. New carpets, electronic blinds, framed posters and photographs from our 125-year-old archive of performances will complete the refurbishment of the auditorium.
Why It Matters
The Fothergill Hall is the heart of performance at Ackworth. It has been home to plays, concerts, musicals and film screenings that have shaped generations of us. The current seating has served us for 25 years, but is now significantly failing. Refurbishment will allow us to host outstanding performances for decades to come, like this year’s Come From Away, and support our outstanding drama and music education. Our next generation of talented actors, musicians, artists and technicians will continue to work in an updated yet historic venue, surrounded by visible memories of those who came before them.
Sponsor a Seat - Leave Your Legacy
Donations of at least £250 cover the cost of a replacement seat. If you can donate at least £250, you can therefore ‘Take Your Seat’ and choose the wording on a personalised plaque. If you are able to donate at least £500, you can choose to take your seat on the front two rows. We very much welcome any support you can offer towards reaching our target, large or small, and all donors will be named in a permanent manner within the completed theatre.
Celebrating people and memories
Those who have sponsored seats so far have done this to mark a range of people and memories:
• Their whole family with links to Ackworth
• Couples who met at school
• Remembering a family member who is an Old Scholar
• Remembering an Ackworth friend, sometimes one we have lost too young
• An Old Scholar in memory of their own love of acting in the Fothergill
• A seat named for a young person, by their parents or family, to celebrate them and cement their memories as they leave Ackworth
• A seat named for a current pupil for whom drama and music are central passions
• In thanks for Ackworth School’s dedication to drama and creative arts
If you are visiting school, do look at the display in Centre Library for more information, a sample chair and prototype dedication plaques made by Kirsty, our DT Technician. The plaques will be made from wood reclaimed from across school, some from particularly iconic locations such as the renovated West Wing Cupola. Many people will want to include names of a number of family members, a quote or dates: there is space for 125 characters over five lines. You can read more about progress, see historic photos and donate through the development webpage.
Arboretum Ackworth
We know how fortunate we are to be surrounded by such beautiful grounds and thousands of trees.
In 2015, Andrew Ward, Head of Biology, dedicated significant expertise and time to set up our arboretum. He researched a list of the 43 UK native trees in consultation with Sheffield Hallam University, mapped them and planted the few species not represented at the time.
Our project now is to produce a downloadable route map, replace rotted wooden marker posts and add QR codes to each post that link to a dedicated webpage for each tree. The webpages highlight biological information about the species, its uses and any Quaker connections, whether the tree of that species growing at Ackworth commemorates an individual or event, and fantastic artwork and facts put together by our current pupils.
You can access the trail map and a list of the tree locations through the website, though you do need to sign up to do so.
In the ten years since Andy set up the arboretum, several of the trees have died. If you would like to donate to replace a tree, you can dedicate it in someone’s memory. We would also be grateful for donations towards the upkeep and mapping of the trees. In the longer term, we will produce a sister guide to the Celebration Park, now also known as the Peace Garden, where many other trees were planted to celebrate the lives of individuals. This guide will include commemoration trees, benches and plaques from around the grounds.
You can see here the first replanting of a tree in March 2026. Patricia Jennings, in consultation with her family, has chosen a black poplar in memory of her husband Gordon, who taught Spanish and French at Ackworth in the 1960s-70s and then again in the 1990s.
The Ackworth Arboretum will be relaunched on Easter Sunday morning by this year’s AOS President, the very appropriately named Trudy Seed!
‘Acky’ Apple Juice
Old Scholars from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s relate that apples from Great Gardens were a staple in school meals.
Written memoirs talk about ‘Acky apple pie’ and ‘Cowboy hat pie’ (so called because the pastry rose up high in the middle during cooking). This autumn, we realised that Ackworth School’s own apples had not been used for almost sixty years and had mostly gone to waste on the ground, so we did something about it!
There are six trees remaining in Great Gardens. Volunteers from staff, senior school pupils and Old Scholars picked 17 boxes. You can see Trudy here helping with the picking. Three boxes went to the kitchens, producing the apple crumble for Founders Day and Ackworth apple chutney.
The majority of the apples were pressed, bottled and pasteurised by Yorkshire Orchards, near Pocklington, to produce 138 bottles. The bottles each have one of two fantastic labels, chosen as winners from a design competition for Coram pupils during Founders Day week. Our winners were Sonny (Y2) and Lydia (Y6), pictured below.
You can order and pay for a bottle of Ackworth ‘vintage’ for £4 through the website. Rachel will contact you to arrange pick-up. The small profit goes towards the school’s sustainability fund, supporting further pupil activities. Using the apples fits so well with the importance Ackworth places on good stewardship of our planet. You can also find more information about the apple project on the webpage, including a fantastic video explanation of the production process by Alec, owner of Yorkshire Orchards. Apple juice will also be served during Easter Gathering weekend in honour of our president and in thanks for her help with picking!
Ackworth Our Witness to History Living Archive
As we head towards school’s 250th anniversary in 2029, a huge priority is to catalogue our archive, safeguard its contents, and open it up within school and for external visitors.
We are so fortunate to have had an unbroken line of skilled volunteer archivists for many decades. Our archivist is Celia Wolfe, retired history teacher with an unsurpassable knowledge of Ackworth history. Celia’s limited time is fully occupied with providing her swift and comprehensive replies to information requests. We are seeking significant funding to allow us to renovate an area of school to museum standards and obtain Museum Development Trust and National Archives grants to help with cataloguing the contents. We have begun discussions with Friends House and The Quaker Tapestry Museum as to how we can work together to strength a spine of Quaker history locations that run throughout the UK.
In parallel, it is equally important to capture the living history that is around us now. Ackworth Living Archive is a collaborative initiative inviting Old Scholars, staff, families, and friends to help preserve and deepen the shared history of the school. Through mapping places, tracing kinship networks, and recording lived memories, the project reflects our Quaker commitment to community, continuity, and stewardship. Together, these witness-to-history strands seek not only to document the past, but to keep bright the chain between generations.
Ackworth Spaces Through Time
We have all had conversations akin to ‘Well, here used to be Seatons, but before that, it was down Station Road’! This is a participatory mapping project charting how the school’s spaces have been used and experienced across different decades. Starting at Easter Gathering 2026 with blank paper plans for each decade to be drawn on by attendees, it will be continued longer term and also draw on photographs and records from the archive. It will capture a layered picture of how Ackworth’s physical environment has evolved alongside school life and will eventually be digitised for online access.
The Ackworth Kinship Project
Rather like the locations project, we are aware of the many generations from some families that have passed through Ackworth. This is a collaborative genealogy project to trace the family connections, Quaker and non-Quaker, of Ackworth pupils and link them to wider Quaker networks across the UK. By mapping lineages and shared histories, it will reveal how generations of Old Scholars have passed through Ackworth. So many of us have wondered whether the repeated surnames on the Highest Scholarship boards or in the archive are related – this will help make that visible! It will also begin at Easter Gathering 2026 with extremely long paper scrolls on which to start drawing our networks.
Keep Bright the Chain: Ackworth Voices Through Time
We have already mentioned our new podcast in the introduction – look out for a piece on this in the next Development News. The ‘roots’ of our Ackworth tree are those who have come before and one thread of the podcast is an oral history project to record the memories of Ackworth Old Scholars and retired staff, preserving the lived experience of school life across generations. Some participants may not want their oral history to be made public through the podcast and that is fine – it can be captured for posterity in the archive. This project will honour the passing on of values, friendships, and stories that bind the Ackworth community together.
We have already started to make recordings –if you would like to take part, please speak to Rachel at Easter Gathering, email rachel.belk@ackworthschool.com or read more through the website
Seedlings
Swimming Pool
These discussions ‘in the potting shed’ are helping us decide which seeds we need to plant out first and help to germinate.
The highest priority capital project for school is to renovate the Swimming Pool. We know how important this is to decades of Old Scholars and staff. The pool is clean and hygienic (despite its appearance), warm and is well-used by pupils all through school, with particular importance for Coram and pupils in the Autism Resource. In addition, the Pisces swimming club have been based at Ackworth for thirty years. However, the pool has not been substantially renovated since 1972. Fundraising began in 2022 with the launch of the ‘250 Club’, but since then there has been no staff capacity in school to build momentum behind this campaign. We are determined to change that and, with Rachel’s appointment, are finally in a position to take this forward with those donors who have generously supported the pool renovation from the start. There will be far more information coming out later in the year – watch this space. We are currently obtaining updated quotes and anticipate the total cost will be in the region of £500,000.
We are delighted to make public that we have recently been gifted a very significant anonymous donation from the family business of current parents. Together with the donors who have been regular monthly givers, this will ‘fill the swimming pool’ beyond 40%...but there is still a long way to go.
Artificial sports pitch
This is also up there amongst our highest priorities, but we are at the very beginning of the funding journey.
How can you help?
We know that some of our Ackworth School community are in a position to ask ‘Can we help you financially?’, either through their businesses or personally. You will be well aware that requesting financial support is something that Ackworth has found difficult to do previously and therefore has only asked sporadically (e.g. Meeting House roof repairs, Music Centre). Careful stewardship of our income and resources means that we cover our core costs of staffing, accommodation and care of our pupils and community, but this cannot provide surplus for large capital projects and bursaries. If you feel that you are in this position and wish to hear more about how you could contribute, we would like to invite you to one of two business networking events, on Wednesday 3rd June 12-2pm or Monday 15th June 6-8pm. You can book for these events through our events page. You can also signal on the booking form if you are unable to attend, but are interested in joining an online event or a future face-to-face event.
Plant a seed
It is clear we have many seedlings already, just waiting to germinate… but we also really want you to plant more seeds of ideas with us. You can do that through our website. In particular, we are starting to gather our ideas for how to mark our 250th in 2029-30 in a way that really celebrates all that we stand for and where we want to take a thriving Ackworth School over the next 250 years.
How you can help us grow
In this first Development News, we have highlighted live projects, particularly the Fothergill Hall, where financial donations from our Ackworth School community will help us realise our ambitions. So yes, financial donations are of course extremely welcome. However, this is only one of the ways in which you can continue to be engaged in this wonderful community.
Through the website, you will start to see opportunities for volunteering. We are further building our careers networks so we can invite individuals, at all stages of life, to offer their expertise: we will be running careers events at the end of the summer term, one thread of the podcast will capture the world of work to inform and inspire our current pupils, and more recent leavers can pass on their current knowledge of university, apprenticeship or other life paths to help those just behind them. We receive contacts from Ackworth f/Friends asking about leaving a legacy to school in their will and we will be providing updated information about this within the next term.
Next term, the following events are already scheduled:
Tuesday 5th May 4.15-4.45pm:
Visiting School
If you are an Old Scholar or a retired staff member, we would love to see you back at Ackworth. The main three occasions are Founders Day (booking required, but free to come and join the walks), Easter Gathering (booking and a charge required, as it is held out of term-time) and Celebration Day (Open Day in old money! This is free to all). You are also welcome to attend school concerts.
Reflect 30, half hour Meeting for Worship in the Meeting House
Tuesday 9th June 4.15-4.45pm:
Reflect 30, half hour Meeting for Worship in the Meeting House
Monday 22nd – Wednesday 24th June evening: Junior Play
Saturday 27th June: Celebration Day
Monday 29th June – Friday 3rd July: A week of Careers (particularly those in digital and technology, sustainability), Sustainability projects, Quaker history and community, Life Skills and Sports Day. We would love your support if your experience or interest is in any of these areas.
If you wish to visit at another time, please contact Rachel. School has inevitably changed over the years in that you need to let us know in advance that you’d like to visit, and register at Reception on arrival.
If there are any of the areas covered within this first newsletter that particularly resonate with you, where you have questions, concerns, suggestions or want to offer support, please do contact Rachel through the website or phone her on 01977 233626.