Celebrating cultural diversity

3 June 2026

Term 2, 2025–26 · Earth Dragons · Ages 7-9

What does it mean to truly make space for everyone? That was the question at the heart of the Earth Dragons' Term 2 project. Over ten weeks, the children went beyond definitions of diversity to encounter it directly — meeting people from the blind, deaf, and low vision communities, visiting schools and workplaces built around inclusion, and writing three plays that gave voice to the real experiences of people around them.

How can we make space for everyone - and what can we learn from the diverse languages, abilities, and backgrounds in our community?

Literacy ran through everything: script writing, dialogue, stage directions, and constructive peer feedback all fed into the ensemble performances. The term ended with a moment that brought everything together — the children performing John Lennon's "Imagine" in both voice and sign language.

Real people

The children had direct encounters with people from several organisations, each bringing a different perspective on what inclusion looks like in practice:

• The Association of Blind People, which visited the school to run a workshop with the students, shared the challenges they face day to day and showed how different approaches to learning can lead to the same outcomes

• The Deaf association, which also visited to share their experiences and ways of communicating with the world around them

• Guide dogs and their handlers, who made a memorable visit to school, gave the children a tangible, close-up encounter with how people and animals work together to navigate daily life

• Families from the class community, who were invited during a series of Cultural Afternoons to share traditions, languages, and stories from the many backgrounds represented in the classroom

Real places

The students visited three places in Budapest that brought their theme to life beyond the classroom:

• Bake My Day social bakery — a Budapest bakery that creates meaningful employment for people with disabilities, giving them job opportunities and a space to develop skills and confidence. The children visited to see first-hand how a workplace can be built around inclusion, and got to taste something from the bakery while they were there.

• Hungarian Heritage House — a guided tour introduced the children to the traditions of Hungarian folk art and craftsmanship, connecting the theme of diversity to the local culture and history of the city they call home.

• Gyengénlátók Általános Iskolája — Low Vision School — the children spent a morning at this specialist school at Miskolci utca 77, Budapest, which supports children and young people with visual impairments through specialised education and adapted learning environments. During the visit, Earth Dragons joined mixed-group activities, simple games, creative tasks, and a short introduction to goalball — a sport designed for visually impaired athletes. The focus of the day was connection, empathy, and practising communication in a real-life setting.

Real products

Literacy ran through the project, feeding directly into the Earth Dragons' main outputs — three plays they wrote and performed themselves:

• Three ensemble plays — working together, the children scripted, rehearsed, and performed three plays that gave voice to real experiences: language barriers, accessibility, and the strengths found in diverse communities. The writing process built skills across dialogue, stage directions, and constructive peer feedback, with each play drawing on the encounters and visits the children had made across the term.

• A performance of "Imagine" — the term closed with a standout moment: the children performing John Lennon's "Imagine" in both voice and sign language, bringing together everything they had learned about communication, empathy, and inclusion into a single shared act.

• A 3D world map — first begun in Term 1, this ongoing collaborative artefact was deepened this term with new cultural layers, reflecting the languages, traditions, and backgrounds the children had been learning about across the unit.