Throughout our history we have welcomed those whose lives are difficult, whether from within this country or those made homeless by war and oppression.  To do less would be to deny our founders' legacy. So given this inheritance it's obvious that we share what we have as widely as we may within the local community in which we are so firmly based.

For a number of years now we have restricted our scholarships to token amounts in order to use our funds to enable children who could not otherwise afford our education to come here. For such places we have a means tested bursary scheme .

We urge those who want to use our facilities to be in touch and thus follow the example of any number of local organisations using our theatre, our music school, our sports facilities, our dance studio or any other of the myriad of facilities you find in a school such as this.

If you are part of a school who would like to be on our invitation list for our school's performances in the award winning Performing Arts Centre, again do please let us know. Sometimes such performances  are during the week and sometimes, for the youngest children, on a Saturday morning. There is a weekend theatre school open to all. 

We feel  particularly priviliged to have strong links with Treloar School & College (for children and teeangers with physical and learning difficulties) as we are recently to have established them with Bell's Piece. This is a Cheshire Home & Centre for adults with mental learning disabilities. Two of our pupils recently spoke at the bi-annual Leonard Cheshire Foundation Conference for Volunteers on what they had learned from their joint production, with Bell's Piece, of "Odysseus" .    This was followed, in March 2008, with a pantomime,  "Dick Whittington", played to a full house in the Performing Arts Centre.  This year's is "The Three Musketeers".     An even more ambitious plan to involve dance, drama and poetry with three different institutions,  as well as Frensham, at the end of June was a triumphant success.   As was a dance piece, in conjunctionn with STOPGap (an abled/disabled dance company) this time working with the Ridgeway School for children with learning difficulties.   

 Next?   The second term of a project that started in September which sees Year 8 pupils spending time in Cobgates Home for older people in Farnham, learning about their lives both now and as children.   This is then used to script a play performed for the residents.  

I cannot thank you enough for coming to talk about your experiences in working with people like my son. What you are doing is a great support to us as parents as well as enabling for the adults concerned"  Delegate to  Leonard Cheshire Foundation Conference 
 

I thought the play was a joy - your young people and our participants bonded very well. Drama as you know, works on so many levels - self esteem, confidence, for our participants especially language and speech therapy, performance, etc. but the whole sense of fun and enjoying themselves was wonderful"   message from chair of Bells Piece Volunteer Support