High street success for business savvy schools

Three business-savvy schools brought their local high street back to life last Saturday, by creating and running pop up shops in an event organised by leading commercial surveyors Hitchcock Wright and Partners, in association with Sainsbury’s.

Crosby’s Holy Family Catholic High School and Merchant Taylors’ Schools, and Southport’s Bishop David Sheppard Primary School took up residence in three shops on the well-known Moor Lane, after weeks of in-school preparation creating everything from business and marketing plans to the stock itself.

Each school showcased their diverse talents, with Holy Family High School displaying their creative skills by selling their incredible hand-made soaps, garden planters and baskets, balancing wine bottle holders and ornamental signs. Their shop was completely transformed on the day, decorated fittingly with huge painted trees and school artwork.

Francis Monaghan, business teacher at Holy Family High School, said: “the Pop Up Crosby event was a great opportunity for our pupils to really promote their skills to their own community. Our students are so talented, and having strangers purchase items they’ve worked so hard on gave them a real sense of pride, while the running of the shop itself gave them great practical business skills.

We raised over £250 for an orphanage in India that the school supports, and had to take orders for our popular items, such as our planters. It was a hugely successful day.”

Merchant Taylors’ Boys and Girls Schools sixth formers innovatively created a ‘Pop Up Party’, in which young Crosby residents could take part in activities ranging from face painting, a tombola, and a putting green, whilst adults perused their stunning collection of hand-crafted ceramics, paintings and cards.

Situated between the high schools, Bishop David Sheppard Primary School amazed passers by with their singing abilities, as the school’s newly formed choir performed moving renditions of popular songs, such as Pharrell Williams’ ‘Happy’, as well as choir classics, in between selling vegetables and plants grown in the school allotment.

Between the schools, over £1,000 was raised for various charities including the Cystic Fibrosis Trust and Cancer Research UK, and pupils found themselves inundated with support from the local community and retailers.