Pupils at Ethelbert Road Primary School in Faversham were chosen to design Christmas cards for Cllr Ben Martin.
Zeenia Naqvee reports.
Zeenia Naqvee reports.
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00:00Many children across Kent are gearing up for the Christmas holidays, but pupils at Ethelbert Road Primary School in Faversham
00:06were paid a special visit by ex-student, the Mayor of Swale.
00:11Every year, Councillor Ben Martin sends out Christmas cards as part of his mayoral duties.
00:16But this year, things looked a little bit different. He asked children from his old school to design them.
00:22It's certainly expanded, but it still has those same values, those same community values that it had when I was here.
00:29It's a special school. It's a wonderful place. I've got a lot of great memories and that's one of the reasons I chose Ethelbert as the school to come to.
00:36You could go traditional, you could just have a nice photo of the mayor in front of a Christmas tree,
00:39but I thought actually Christmas, as a dyslexic, I do like to support the creative side of education as well.
00:46And I thought, what's more festive than asking the children to do it?
00:49They're then sent to other mayors, his chosen charities, and some are reserved for personal use.
00:54One of the primary school pupils even wrote a festive poem for Inside the Card.
00:58I also like poems, so that's why I did a poem.
01:02I was shocked because I didn't think it would be me.
01:06I thought it would be like three people in year six and maybe one person that's younger.
01:13I didn't think it would be me.
01:17I decided to do this card design because I thought it would be a fun, funny sort of card.
01:25It's Santa stuck in a chimney.
01:29I'm happy, I'm shocked that I did, but I'm happy.
01:33I drew the Christmas tree because I liked when the Christmas tree went up and it made it all shiny with the baubles and the decoration.
01:44I'm really, really, really happy.
01:46I tried to copy the Christmas tree out there.
01:49It's clear that Ethelbert Road Primary School fosters a creative environment that encourages its 210 pupils to get involved in the arts.
01:58So when the Mayor of Swale was looking for a school, around 100 pupils jumped at the chance and a total of four children were selected for his cards.
02:06Staff at Ethelbert put forward around 40 entries to the Mayor before the four lucky children were crowned winners.
02:13So we gave the children free range. They were able to either paint or draw a picture or write a poem to go and then we sent off the ones that we felt were brilliant.
02:24We were very honoured that we were chosen by the Mayor to have the Christmas card competition here.
02:31Then when we found out he was a former pupil, he came and did an assembly with our children.
02:37Councillor Martin enlisted the help of previous Mayors for his judging panel.
02:41Once he'd finalised the four, designers at the Council scanned the prints and made them into both physical and digital cards.
02:47Xenia Nakvi for KMTV in Faversham.