Thank you for the inspiration!
Dear Daniel,
First of all, we just wanted to say how inspiring we find your work. So inspiring in fact, that it’s inspired us to create a massive mural competition across our family of schools. You will find a preview of that competition below – it will shortly be going live on our website.
We appreciate how very busy you are but, if you would be able to get involved in any way, we know it will help us raise even more for Birmingham Children’s Hospital. We’re up to £25,000 so far this year.
We will be revealing the winning entries of this mural competition at our massive event on 24 October at the ICC in Birmingham, showing them on the giant screens. It would be superb if you could judge the competition!
To explain more about 24 October: this is when the whole of our trust staff come together at the ICC. It’s a massive event and we always have inspiring speakers. This video of last year might give you a flavour https://www.matrixacademytrust.co.uk/trustday2024/
We know it’s a longshot, but it would be amazing if you could be our speaker this year, sharing your journey and all the community work you do.
We know we cannot complete with Jason Derulo (!) but of course we would be happy to pay an appearance fee, travel expenses and make a contribution to your fundraiser.
Please do let me know if any of this – the judging and/or the appearance – is remotely feasible!
David Lowbridge-Ellis MBE
Director of Educational Standards – Matrix Academy Trust
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Matrix Mural Competition
See your art on the wall of every Matrix school!
Every young person in every Matrix school is invited to have a go at creating a piece of artwork for this competition. All you have to do is create something visual which expresses how you feel about your school being a community.
The definition of community our pupils came up with is this:
A diverse family of people who care for each other, coming together to work through challenges, sharing our positivity to help wider society.
In your piece, you can choose to focus on a part of this definition or the whole of it.
There will be a winning entry for each school: Barr Beacon School, Bloxwich Academy Primary, Bloxwich Academy Secondary, Dame Elizabeth Cadbury School, Etone College, Turves Green Boy’s School, Smestow Academy, Wednesfield Academy.
This winning entry will appear on the wall of every one of our schools, as part of a massive mural.
You can produce your art using traditional methods (pencils, paint, etc) or electronic means. The only thing you can’t do it use AI – this is an expression of your creativity after all.
Send your winning entry to community@matrixacademytrust.co.uk or hand it in to your school’s community lead member of staff. These are:
- Barr Beacon School: Miss R Rorter
- Bloxwich Academy Secondary: Miss J Williamson
- Bloxwich Acaedemy Primary: Mrs S Shepherd
- Dame Elizabeth Cadbury School: Ms K Shahmiri
- Etone College: Mr D Bowley
- Smestow Academy: Ms A Heilbronn
- Turves Green Boys School: Mrs S Bacciochi
- Wednesfield Academy: Mrs S Howells
Closing date: 5 September 2025
Why is community important?
Matrix Academy Trust is a family of schools, each of which have their own unique feeling while being part of something bigger.
If you look it up in a dictionary, you will find many different definitions. So we asked our pupils to tell us what they thought community meant. That’s the definition which is at the heart of this competition (above).
Two children were chosen from each school to become their Community Champions. They met early in 2025 to come up with fundraising ideas for their school and to work together on creating a definition of community to be used in every school.
Already this year, staff from across the trust have raised over £25,000 for Birmingham Children’s Hospital by completing the Three Peaks Challenge. You can find out more about this here.