St Mary’s C of E School
At Shepherd’s £34m project to build a new secondary school for St Mary’s Church of England School at Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, a marketing project was introduced to create and sustain strong links with the local community.
“The St Mary’s learning community has been fortunate to have Shepherd Construction working with their architects to provide fantastic new facilities into which we are due to move in April 2010. A distinctive and very special feature of the project has been the unique opportunities provided by the Shepherd Marketing Team to ensure students have been fully involved with the new building. This has included organising special events and visits to the new school as well as allowing students to work alongside Shepherd employees in a range of construction related roles. The students have really enjoyed the work with Shepherd staff and the fact that they have been able to act as ambassadors for the new site has been a very powerful tool to support Student Voice and personal responsibility.”
Stephanie Benbow - Head Teacher, St Mary’s C of E High School
At Shepherd’s £34m project to build a new secondary school for St Mary’s Church of England School at Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, a marketing project was introduced to create and sustain strong links with the local community. Working closely with the school, Shepherd delivered a programme to add value to all stakeholders and leave behind a strong community legacy once the construction work was completed. We wanted to generate a buzz and sense of excitement around the new build, ensuring everyone in the community was engaged and had a sense of ownership and pride with the new build.
A student marketing group was established, who worked in tandem with Shepherd’s team to deliver key project work, including:
- Monthly visits to undertake progress photography on site, following a photography masterclass session with Shepherd Construction’s in-house photographer
- Compiling press releases for the local newspapers, and hosting press days with the regional newspaper and construction publications
- Presenting updates to the rest of the school on the progress of the build during an assembly, showing a film they had made on site and posting further regular updates on the School’s website and noticeboards.
- A series of events including a 'topping out' ceremony, a time capsule burial, staff, student and parent tours, open days on site for the community, a balloon race for all pupils and staff to mark the end of the summer term and support with parents evenings
In addition, all students at the school also had an opportunity to learn first-hand about the career opportunities available to them in construction, through work-based learning placements and careers talks.