Official Opening Ceremony

23 November 2011

We officially celebrated the move to our new home in St Anne’s School, at a formal Opening Ceremony on 23 November. Over 100 guests joined us, including Kindergarten families and staff- past and present, members of the local Roath community, St Anne’s church community and staff and pupils from the former St Anne’s Church in Wales School.

Julia Griffiths, Chair of the Centre Trustees, introduced the evening thanking staff, families, and friends who worked so hard to secure and transform the building into the Cardiff Steiner Early Years Centre, and also the local and church communities who supported our bid to take on the building. Kindergarten Teacher, Anna Podesta, told a wonderful story of a child’s search for knowledge, a parable of the growth and journey of the Kindergarten itself, from our very first parent and toddler group to our current new home.

Fourteen former Kindergarten children, aged 8 to 16, carried 14 beautiful lanterns, handmade by parents, to represent the 14 years since our Centre began. They laid them in the centre of the hall on tables draped in blue velvet. It was extremely moving to see the reverence, grace, warmth and beauty of these wonderful young people, and the love and respect they still have for the Kindergarten that nurtured them in their early years.

Teacher Anna Podesta lit a special lamp which our current Kindergarten children passed one to another with the words “We give, we share, we learn to care, for when we give, we learn to live”.

Once every child had passed on the lamp, Rohan Grewal, aged 6, carried it to the centre of the 14 lanterns, and, with the greatest care, concentration and serenity, lit it a taper from the lamp and used it to light our ‘Candle of the Future’. It was a significant and emotional moment for all present as they watched the flame flicker and glow to life and light. Reminding us of where we have come from and symbiolising where we hope to go, the candle will be used for all our important future celebrations.

Russell Evans, good friend of the Kindergarten, and a grandfather figure throughout our development, read the blessing which had been used at the opening of our first Kindergarten in 1998.

Dr Abdalla Yasin Mohamed, Director of the Islamic Social Services Association spoke about the importance of reverence and simplicity in education, and said the Centre reminded him of his childhood in Sudan.

“This takes me back to my boyhood in the Sudan where our toys were branches and butterflies, whatever we could find became something wonderful.”

Rev Stuart Lisk, Vicar of Roath, gave a blessing that linked the old and new lives of the building.

“We were sad to see the end of the old St Anne’s but delighted to see it reborn and caring for children in a new and imaginative way.”

The lovely former infants school opened as Crofts Street National School in April 1879. It became St Anne’s Church in Wales Primary School in 1949, and an infant school in 1954. It closed in July 2011 as part of Cardiff’s schools reorganisation.

St. Anne’s is located in a strong local community with a longstanding sense of responsibility and love for the school. This is extremely important to us and we feel privileged to take the school forward into this new phase of its life.

After the official ceremony guests relaxed with homemade cakes, teas and coffees and looked around the new Kindergarten rooms.

_{(l to r) Teifion Griffiths, fomer headmaster of St Teilo’s Church In Wales High School, Anna Podesta, Kindergarten Teacher, Prof James Whitley, Cardiff University}

_{(l to r) Nadi Grewal, Centre parent, Russell Evans, Centre friend}