Students and Staff at Glasshouse College in Stourbridge held their Michaelmas festival on Tuesday 29th September. The festival marks a period in the year time where we give thanks to the harvest, cross a threshold into autumn and begin to face, in the spirit of St Michael, our internal challenges or fears, represented by the face of the dragon.
The festival is the first of many within the seasonal curriculum of Practical Skill Therapeutic Education (PSTE) across Ruskin Mill Trust provisions and is marked at the same time with the Michaelmas bells at each provision being rung simultaneously.
Students and staff celebrated during the day with bell ringing, apple pressing and a performance of a student Michaelmas play; in the garden, community Michaelmas festival songs and writing challenges that will be re-visited at Springtime. The festival culminated in a performance by the stage group from Eurythmy West Midlands.
On the evening of Friday 2nd October, the festival was repeated for an external audience of parents/carers and the public, beginning with warm autumn food, sourced from our bio-dynamic farm. The evening audience also had the opportunity to listen to a talk focused around ‘What is Michaelmas?