London City Airport put St Lukes Primary School's poetry in motion

On a visit to St Lukes Primary School, Canning Town, Richard Gooding OBE, Chief Executive of London City Airport read a selection of the pupil’s poetry and was hugely impressed by the quality of the work. Richard organised for the company graphic designer to design a booklet including some of the children’s poetry and art work and also arranged for the airport to cover the cost of the printing.

Richard said “I was actually visiting the school for a completely different event. I was honored to be presenting pupils with end of term prizes but it was impossible to miss the high standard of work displayed on notice boards around the corridors of the school. The poetry was so brilliant that I was pleased to be able to offer the pupils the opportunity to publish their work and share it with others”.

The poetry was celebrated at the launch of St Luke’s recent Extreme Reading Week. This was launched with a ‘Desert Island Read’ Assembly with Richard marooned on an island with his favourite books which included the St. Luke’s Sweep the Moon poetry anthology! The event highlighted the importance of reading at school and at home. The Extreme Reading activities built on the work  from an earlier visit  from Children’s Poet Laureate Michael Rosen who had asked to work with the pupils who had impressed him so much at the Barbican.

Every pupil in the school took home a copy of the poetry booklet, ‘I Sweep the Moon’ a St. Luke’s Poetry Anthology.

The airport’s support of this project is in line with it’s education excellence programme which focuses on basic skills, particularly literacy and numeracy.