A very big thank you to all those who attended the Farmington Conference. Oxford at the end of June was sweltering, but that didn’t deter our Farmington teacher-scholars who created a mediterranean atmosphere at the conference.
The Saturday afternoon lecture by Dr Gillian Georgiou, RE & SIAMS Advisor for the Diocese of Lincoln, was wonderfully engaging. ‘Knowing You, Knowing Me’ recalled us to the necessity (as the Greeks would have agreed) of knowing yourself, before you can usefully know anything else. After dinner, Simon Lough, chair of the Temple Grove Schools Trust, who have partnered with us to support a number of primary teachers, urged us all not to give up on optimism.
At the Sunday service, the Rev. Charlotte Bannister-Parker spoke on the value of teachers, and long-time Farmington supporter Adrian Trapp stood in marvellously as organist and choir director when our usual stalwart, Dr Myles Hartley, was detained elsewhere by his actual paid work (shocking!).
Thanks, too, to Dr Martin Kauffmann, Head of Early and Rare collections at the Bodleian, who gave us a private showing of some of the Library’s extraordinary materials. His theme – childhood – encompassed a 3-century Egyptian boy’s letter to his father, Jane Austen’s ‘Volume the First’ and drawings by J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.
This year’s scholars’ excellent presentations were wide-ranging and full of interest and, as ever, gave a snapshot of schools around the country: in the same room we heard from a teacher from the largest primary in Britain and another from a school in the 4 most-deprived district in the country.
Many thanks for all your support and we are looking forward to seeing you next year already!
