Carousel Day film

 The School for Profound Education has produced a free Carousel Days resource pack for other special schools to use. To find out how to get your copy and for more information about Carousel Days, click here.

The school is one of the few places in the UK providing education, therapy and care exclusively to learners with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD) and complex health needs.

Produced by Spectrecom Films Ltd.

Transcription of our Carousel Day film:

"The School’s called the School for Profound Education and we’re one of the few schools that cater for children with profound and multiple learning difficulties and complex medical needs. And the children are functioning – if you think of a baby about three months old to twelve months old; the children are functioning at that level.

"Carousel Day is our multi-sensory approach. Carousel Day really is a theme day in which we create a different world for each person. The theme this time is “Music through the Ages”. At regular intervals, at about twenty-five minutes, a hooter goes and then each class has to rotate around the school one slot.

"I’m doing the taiko drums of Japan, we’ve kind of gone for as much percussion as possible so it enables our students to choose something which is good for them, that they can use and play with.

"When I was working with Joshua, he was reluctant at first to really start drumming in the Carousel group. It was all about taking turns and actually seeing whether he wanted to enter into that with me, so I started off with a few simple drum beats myself and gave Joshua time to respond. And, lo and behold, he started playing the drums and it was really nice, it felt like that there was a bond there, that we were playing together.

"Our theme in here is going to be the musical, “The Lion King” and we’ve themed the environment to make it like a multi-sensory environment, so when the learners go there, they’ll have different sights, sounds, smells, feelings, different tastes. They’re going to dress up and they’re going to have masks on as lions, face painted as lions. They might have the fur over the top of their wheelchairs that we’ve made so that everyone is in character and everyone is in role. We try and do a bit of everything really.

"We’ve been doing the Charleston, so we’ve been dancing away today, all day and they have to make an outfit, so the boys are making a really nice shirt and tie and the girls make a little headband to wear. I was working with Sarah so that she could make her headband – to start with, she could choose the colour she wanted to wear. We used hand over hand for Sarah, we press a switch so she could operate the machine. We were doing that together and then we were there, dancing away - the Charleston.

"So many of our learners and all the people that join in with Carousel Day have such fun for the whole day. The learners get a lot out of it because their facial expressions change, their vocalisations.

"All the staff here are very passionate and dedicated to working with our learners. Our mission statement is "putting learners first" and if we do that, we can’t go wrong."