EVENTS – Public events
‘History lovers fl ocked to our
Roman festival’ Hayley Harrison is chair of Birdlip Primary School PTA in Gloucester (100 pupils)
A lady from our local history society fi rst approached us and asked if we’d be interested in organising a Roman festival with them. We said yes straight away, because we knew the kids would love it. Joining forces with the history society meant we had lots of people to help and could make it a really big event. Birdlip has a strong Roman
connection – archaeologists found lots of Roman remains when the new road was built here. One of our locals is a member of the Ermine Street Guard, who travel all over the country performing Roman reenactments, and they agreed to be involved. A local farmer let us hire
several fi elds and a bar in a converted barn. The Ermine Street
Guard dressed up as Roman soldiers and marched from the school all the way down to the fi elds, where they set up a Roman camp. It was quite a sight to see. There were reenactments
throughout the day, Roman games for the children to play, Roman toolmaking workshops and stalls selling replica Roman artefacts. Cotswold Archaeology displayed some of their fi nds, as did the local metal detecting society and Cirencester Museum. We had food vendors doing pizza, a barbecue and ice cream. It was hilarious seeing all the Roman soldiers queuing up at the ice cream van. The event was really successful
– more so than we expected, considering it was the fi rst year we’d done it. Around 1,000 people came, including foreign tourists and archaeology enthusiasts from all around the country. We raised £6,000, which we split with the history society. We’re a very small school, so to raise that kind of money we’d have had to do hundreds of non-uniform days. I’d really recommend other
PTAs capitalising on their own local history if they can.
‘Our fi reworks display is a local institution’
Lisa Fox is chair of Wisbech St Mary Church of England Academy PTFA (200 pupils)
O
ur school fi reworks display has been going for over 40 years and everybody knows about it. We get up to 3,000 people and only about
20 per cent are school families. We’re only a small village, but people drive 15 or 20 miles to come. In recent years the profi ts have been amazing – the last one made almost £15,000. We use an outside company to do the
fi reworks and we make sure they’re very high quality, which I think is important. It’s also important to make it feel like we’re offering a whole evening’s entertainment. We start by lighting the bonfi re about half an hour after we open, which always gets a big whoop from the crowd. Then we have two fi reworks displays, one a bit earlier that’s more for the younger kids, and another later on that’s slightly more dramatic. Having a second display is a good way of getting people to stick around, so they spend more money at the stalls. We bring in outside vendors to do
everything from jacket potatoes, pizza, fi sh and chips and burgers to fajitas and a hog roast. There’s always a carousel ride for the little kids, and we’ve had car rides and a Fun House. People either approach us with a view to attending, or I fi nd them through Facebook. Many have been coming back for years. We keep things simple by charging a fl at fee. Holding such a big event can be stressful
but it’s worth it when you see everyone enjoying themselves.
32 SPRING 2026 School Fundraising
AS TOLD TO NUALA CALVI
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