Last year parents and teachers at St Edwards Catholic Primary School decided that we wanted to create something special for our school and the local community. We opted for the re-purposing of a double decker bus to create a multi use, engaging, welcoming and exciting space to include reading a sensory areas. At St Edwards we’re an inclusive school with children of different abilities/needs so it’s important to us that it works for everyone. We started looking for a bus and as luck would have it we found a local taxi firm TC Cars whom had a bus for sale. They were kind enough to sell it to us at a rock bottom price and even donated £500 towards refurbishment; one of their drivers also did some fund raising and was able to boost our pot by a further £600. 

But refurbishing a bus and equipping it doesn’t come cheap; with professional firms charging upwards of £20,000 which is way out of our price range. So we’re going to do it ourselves; hopefully with the help of our wonderful community. 

There’s a lot to do 

So far we’ve been supported by the lovely Billy at ‘Glitzy Bits’ who has donated our first prize for the ‘guess the name of the bus draw’. And the fabulous Hawthorne’s hardware are kindly donating some cleaning materials but we need more. 

Can you or somebody you know help us create this welcoming, stimulating and engaging environment for our local children who’ve been through so much this last year. 

Here’s a list of the type of help we need

• Carpenters/handymen we need your time and expertise to build shelving / storage. 
• Have you got some wood or mdf that you could donate for building shelves / storage 
• We need hard wearing and easy to clean flooring. 
• Are you a local artist or painter. We’d love to hear from you with ideas for designs both internally and externally. And if you could gift us some time to help us paint etc
• We need Bean bags / soft furnishings ( no seats) in durable preferably wipe clean material. 
• We need to strip off existing Vinyls /paintwork do you have special equipment we can borrow or could you come and do it for us 
• We need to build a hard standing and get an electrical hook up. Not to mention stock the bus with sensory equipment and books so we are doing some fundraising. Can you help with donations of prizes for a raffle we’d like to run. 

Or maybe you could spare us a £1 or £2 if you’d like to make a donation cheques can be made payable to St Edwards PTFA and sent to the school or by BACS using SC 30:90:89 and Acc no 35653068

Any enquiries / offers of please get in touch with Martina on 07962 378 107 or Jo on 07818 553 966

Any and all help will be appreciated… Get on board the bus