Member Article

Barratt Homes launches interior design competition with New Waltham Academy

Local housebuilder Barratt Homes Yorkshire East has teamed up with the pupils at New Waltham Academy with an interior design competition to inspire the theme of a new children’s bedroom at one of its nearby show homes.

The school council, with the children aged between 7 and 11 at New Waltham Academy, which is located close to the housebuilder’s Wigmore Park development on Station Road, were asked to create a children’s bedroom design from their favourite Roald Dahl book.

Reading continues to play an integral part in children’s mental wellbeing. With research by National Literacy Trust finding that 59.3% of children and young people stated that reading during lockdown has made them feel better, with 31.6% saying that reading helps when they’ve felt sad from not being able to see loved ones.

The drawings sent in by the children captured various wonderfully drawn bedrooms based on favourite books, but the chosen winner, judged by the Barratt Homes team was a wonderful design of a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory themed bedroom, with features including golden ticket bedding, candy lolly lamp shades, and further sweet-covered decorations, by Casper aged 7 winning a £50 Amazon voucher.

The interior design team at Wigmore Park will now get to work with bringing Casper’s drawing to life before the new show home opens.

In second place, winning a £30 voucher was Jude with a drawing of a BFG themed bedroom, and Mason with his creative and colourful image of a bedroom of Willy Wonka from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as the main theme, came in third and won a £20 voucher.

Alison Cook, Senior Teacher at New Waltham Academy, said: “We’re extremely grateful to Barratt Homes Yorkshire East for giving our pupils the opportunity to take part in such a fun and creative activity. Everyone loved taking part in this and were really excited at being given the chance to have their vision for a new bedroom brought to life. It’ll be great to see the show home design come to life with the general theme of Casper’s design.”

Sarah Crawford, Field Sales Manager at Barratt Homes’ nearby Wigmore Park development, added: “Barratt Homes Yorkshire East is keen to support the local community wherever possible, and we’ve really enjoyed teaming up with a local school and bringing their thoughts and creations to life in our show home. Once the room is complete, we’d love to bring the children on site to see the decorated room based on the chosen favourite book.

“We’re keen on encouraging children to carry on reading as it’s incredibly important, especially since the difficulties that the pandemic brought. We should all take time out of our day to read to help our mental wellbeing and learning.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Richard Savage .