Today is RSA Academies' Takeover Day, when students from The RSA’s Family of Academies visit the RSA in central London to meet staff, find out more about what we do and suggest how we could do things better.
Here, 4 A-level students from Holyhead School in Birmingham take over our website, and reflect on their impression of the RSA shortly after arriving. Later in the afternoon they also will be invited to pitch ideas for their own community projects to RSA staff members.
Kiran:
The building looks really nice and sophisticated; I’m looking forward to the tour to look around the building and explore. The icebreaker game was really exciting and fun! It really got me up and engaged very easily and fast! It was a perfect start to the program! I’m really looking forward to presenting my pitch as I’m really passionate about what our ideas and really would like to help the locals in our area to be warm this Christmas. Winning the pitch would be amazing! It’s the only way we would be given the chance to do something and give us our first step forward! Plus, I want to make my school proud too!
Gursharon:
The people that work for the RSA very welcoming as they have offered to store our coats away, as soon as we entered the building. They seem like a very helpful bunch that are willing to provide support to many schools that want to start a project to improve their local area or something that they are passionate about. I think this is a great idea, as many young people have many ideas that can be developed with a little more support. All the schools that were in the room took part in the first activity which was very fun, as we all got to answer questions that were to do with the RSA, everyone was enjoying themselves and moving about. One of the questions that we answered was “Who won the FA cup in 1968?” This was out of 4 teams in total; surprisingly we all got caught out, even though West Bromwich Albion was our principal’s favourite team. We should’ve known this, how embarrassing. The RSA have done an immaculate job in welcoming us and we have already felt like we apart of the RSA family, even though we have only been here for an hour or so.
Prabhpreet:
Arriving at the RSA, I’m personally quite impressed. To me RSA is something new and today’s a first time experience. We've arrived here at around midday to be welcomed by RSA staff who have briefly told us the role of RSA and as a whole what the organisation is about and what they hope to achieve. First activity of the day, the icebreaker was defiantly something to get everyone in. Holyhead did manage to do well until it came to the question, “Who won the FA Cup in 1968?” which unfortunately let us down. (Mr Bayliss won’t be happy, especially as it is his supporting team but we'll overlook that for now.) Up until now, I’m actually quite interested and hope to learn more and enjoy the rest of the day.
Simran:
We arrived at the RSA and we were welcomed by a member of staff who was very pleasant and put our coats away and then directed us to where we needed to go. We took part in the ice breakers shortly after watching a video about the RSA and their history. The ice breakers consisted of questions and we had the options of red, green, blue and orange in each corner of the room. The first question we were asked was in what year was the RSA established which was 1754, which we had learnt from the video we had watched prior to the ice breaker. One of the questions in the ice breaker that nobody had got incorrect was ‘which popstar recently released the song Bad Blood’ which was of course Taylor Swift. One of the questions that nobody had got correct was ‘what team won the FA cup in 1968’ which was West Bromwich Albion which our head teacher supports with a passion. Overall, so far the day has gone well and seems like it will be fun.
Read in full what happened at Takeover Day 2015 and about the fantastic community project ideas the students have developed.
Well done to all the schools and students – everyone did such a great job of taking us over that the Children’s Commissioner has awarded us with a gold commendation for the day.