PRESS RELEASE
sent to local press, radio and internet media
22.10.12
GSUS LIVE REACHES FINAL WEEK
The GSUS LIVE mobile classroom is now in the final week of its tour of six of Thurrock’s secondary schools and academies.
This week, it’s expected some 300 students at Harris Academy on Chafford Hundred will get to engage with storylines about three virtual young people. Using computer programmes, they’ll be taken through the everyday themes of fear, rejection and forgiveness. The content is compatible with the RE Key Stage 3 curriculum.
Over the past half-term, GSUS LIVE has visited five other local schools – Grays School; Hassenbrook Academy; Gateway Academy; Treetops; and St Clere’s. The unit comes free of charge and is manned by volunteers and ministers from a wide variety of the borough’s churches.
Project leader Tim Harrold says, “It’s been a great few weeks with at least a couple of thousand young people coming through GSUS LIVE. There’s been some excellent feedback from the classes and a few really insightful observations and questions from the students.”
Teachers have watched as their classes have come on board and very quickly got completely absorbed in the interactive programme. Tim continues, “The level of interest and mostly impeccable behaviour shown by the young people of all the schools and in every session shows that Christian teaching is still very relevant for today for everyone, no matter what their social, ethnic or religious background.”
This is the fourth time GSUS LIVE has been to Thurrock since 2002. Will it come back again in another three or four years’ time? “I don’t know,” says Tim, “It depends on if the schools want it again, and if local churches are willing to support such an undertaking. But it provides an invaluable opportunity for connections to be made across our communities in this age of the Big Society and at a difficult time in history when people are asking the deep questions of life.”
GSUS LIVE will be followed on Friday 2 November by the GSUS LIVE After Party at the Civic Hall in Grays. Students who went onto the unit have been invited and given tickets in the form of wristbands, without which they can’t get in. Performing at the party are the chart-topping band LZ7, who went down a treat at last year’s Rock Thurrock events.
Pictures:
top: The GSUS LIVE unit at Harris Academy on a foggy autumn morning
bottom: Chafford Hundred Community Church’s Steve Morris (team leader for the Harris week) on the unit’s steps
GSUS LIVE PRAYER TIME THIS FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER AT GRAYS METHODIST CHURCH – STARTS 7.30pm