Awards and Presentations

Tonight was the awards ceremony for the Aim Higher Program in Derby City. The event was taking place at a big place on Pride Park near the Rams stadium.

DS was also due to be playing in the Steel band at the event so we had to get there a little early at 6.30. It was a bit of a rush since I was out all day but we got there in good time and I found a seat right at the front while DS & DD hooked up with the rest of the band.

The presentation was for the Aim Higher program DS has only been part of the program for the past year and hasn't really had much chance to take part in many courses so I was really proud of him for getting an award. DD was part of the program for 3 years but unfortunately they only started giving out awards this year so she seems to have missed out again.
There were lots of children from schools all over Derby and there were up to 10 children from each school getting awards as well as other specialised awards and presentations.

At just after 7pm the band started to play. There was also a choir from the Children's university.
Instead of the band playing it's set and then the choir doing their set, to keep people interested they took it in turn to do a song each which was really good.




When the presentations finally started the co ordinator announced that they would do them in school order and that to save time we should only clap each school and not each child.

DS was the very first name to be read out and it was all a bit speedy for me to co ordinate clapping for him and taking pictures at the same time.


In hindsight I wish we could have sneaked out after that as we then had to sit through all the other hundreds of awards. I kept looking over at DS sat on his own and he was loosing the will to live.

We were shown a slideshow about the work of the program and introduces to lots of project leaders and there was a presentation by some pupils about what they have learned from the program.

I had been lead to believe that DS would be getting 2 awards but as we finally came to the last presentation of the evening it was clear there wasn't a second award for him.

It was about 8.45 when we came out so I called a taxi and waited as other people got in their taxis. Unfotunately we were waiting for almost an hour and by the time we got home it was nearly 10pm and I was absolutely freezing. A disappointing end to a good rewarding evening for DS (He also received a £10 gift voucher)