Three pupils from Parkhall Integrated College were presented with an award on Thursday afternoon, the 25th September, at a ceremony for Carson Award winners which took place at Hazelwood Integrated College, Belfast. They gained first place at Key stage 4 for their integrated artwork entitled, ‘Building Bridges. The son of the late Frank Carson, Tony Carson, presented this award to Hannah Mellon, Maggie Chan and Charlotte Braithwaite, year 12 students.
The girls also met Baroness May Blood and talked about their work and their ideas. Many Integrated schools took part in the award ceremony to showcase their choirs, film making, artwork and other creative work. Baroness May Blood spoke about her hopes for integrated education and Mrs McIver, co-coordinator of integrated education at Parkhall IC, paid a tribute to her friend and renowned artist, Nicola Russell who passed away in June. Nicola was heavily involved in the work of the Integrated Education Fund had worked with students from Parkhall IC and Crumlin IC in the past.
The ceremony which was compered by the actor and comedian, Dan Gorden was a huge success and showed off the great work that is going on in the integrated schools of Northern Ireland. May Blood was very impressed with the standard of work and the pupils achievement evident in her words, ‘I cannot be anything but optimistic about the future of Integrated education when I look around at the pupils here today’. The school received a substantial sum of money thanks to the Carson award to invest in their community relations and integration work this year.
