Year 9 Pupils from Villiers High School in Ealing taking part in Mosaic’s Secondary School Programme were recently given the fantastic opportunity to visit Tower Bridge on a World of Work visit. The school is one of five Heathrow borough schools funded by the Heathrow Community Fund’s Inspiring Youth Programme.
The children followed in the steps of famous celebrities on the well-known London landmark that has recently been visited by Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise, filming scenes for the latest Mission Impossible movie and Ant and Dec filming for Britain’s Got Talent.
The World of Work visit began with a tour of Tower Bridge Exhibition and Engine Rooms, where the children got to see the Bridge up close, and also take a fascinating peek behind the scenes of the popular tourist attraction, which is used by over 40,000 people each day. The Bridge was built between 1886 and 1894.
As part of the visit the pupils also got to meet the team responsible for the day to day running of Tower Bridge, including members of the marketing and exhibition team who spoke about their job roles and the routes they took to get there, followed up with a Q and A session.
The children were then split into three teams; PR, advertising and social media, to create a publicity campaign for the Bridge, which they then presented to the group. The Tower Bridge team then provided constructive feedback on the presentations made by the teams.
Speaking about his experience, Maghfoor Ahmed said: “At the exhibition we got to experience the Tower Bridge in full depth, for instance, we found out that Horace Jones designed the tower bridge and Sir John Wolfe Barry constructed it. We all got to go on the glass walkway which was brand new to us; we all loved it except for one student who was eventually brave enough to come on in the end.”
Mosaic is indebted to the very many organisations and companies that allow our young people to experience these unique world of work visits that helps broaden their notion of what the world of work looks like. If you think your company might be a useful place to visit for our young people, please do get in touch mosaic@bitc.org.uk.
