Bedales celebrates the 'freedom to learn'

Students and staff at Bedales came together for a day of innovative learning activities on 16 June when they took part in Garrett Day, Bedales’ Summer term community day.

One of three termly community days named after key figures in the founding of the school, Garrett Day is named after Amy Garrett Badley. The wife of Bedales founder John Haden Badley and cousin of prominent suffragist Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Amy was a suffragist herself and instrumental in ensuring Bedales became co-educational in 1898 at a time when almost no other public schools were.

United by the theme of this year’s Garrett Day – freedom to learn – staff created a day of learning away from the conventional timetable and classroom structures, giving everyone the opportunity to discover and create something new.

Activities included writing and recording protest music, building a ‘Blooklet’ (a game based learning tool), creating art with chemical indicators, exploring historical events in poetry, investigating and designing an individual fitness programme, animating Newton’s Three Laws, producing art inspired by the outdoors and even creating a new language.