This weekend is for all adults who work with young people; workshops include ‘How to lead prayer with young people’, The use of facilitation skills in group work’, The use of games in youth ministry ....’ and many more.
This year 'Search for the Light' - our open Easter retreat, is taking place from Thursday 1st to Sunday 4th April. Download the booking form here!
We are now taking applications for young people 16 – 18 (years 11 – 13) who are not in a Catholic school but want to go on our Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes. This is a great opportunity to celebrate our faith and serve members of our diocesan family on pilgrimage.
Live it Derby is working with the parishes of Derby to put on a musical interpretation of The Stations of the Cross. Click here to find out more.
The Briars and Reach4 are seeking applicants for next years residential and outreach team.
Hiii!
I’m Sinéad and I’m 19 years old and I refuse to get any older! This is my second year at the Briars, now as part of the Reach4 team, and I can’t wait to visit lots of you in your own schools and parishes; hopefully I’ll see some familiar faces and meet lots of new people too.
I love to talk to everyone, and be warned, if anyone starts a conversation to do with Maths or being a twin I will ramble on for ages! This is mainly because I have a twin brother and I want to do Maths at University…..because everyone knows that Maths is the best subject ever (so if any of you have any Maths homework when I’m there we’re going to have a great time). I’m so excited to come and visit you all in your schools because I LOVED school…and I’m not afraid to admit to it! School dinners especially were the highlight of my day (after maths lessons of course). My favourite food has to be bread or chicken or pasta or Wotsits or cheese or pickled onions……everything basically!
By the time I’m 50 I want to have swam with dolphins, gone to New York, skydived, and met a celebrity. So if anyone has ever met anyone famous please tell me all about it.
Basically, I love to talk, eat, laugh…everything really!
Can’t wait to see you all and have lots of fun:)!
It’s been a busy few months, I can’t believe it’s nearly Easter already!
A huge hello to all the groups that we’ve worked with since January, sorry I haven’t done individual messages to each group. I’ve loved working with so many different groups from Lent days with Year 6’s, music and chaplaincy training to starting our Confirmation Programmes in different parishes.
All of the groups have been amazing and made the job a lot of fun!
Sinéad
Reach4
Well after our Christmas break I was feeling very full, but eager to get to work in 2010! The year had a kickstart with Team Conference where we get to meet loads of youth workers like ourselves from all across the country. It was an amazing weekend and I had lots of fun…especially playing a spy game in the snow and taking part in a quiz where I had to eat a cricket…urgh!!! It was so nice to get to spend some time together and to meet other people having similar experiences to start the year.
Although we were all very tired after Team Conferenbce it was straight back to work on Monday and before we knew it we were planning all sorts of exciting stuff for the next few months.
Our first outing of the year was to CTU to get the ‘Born For This’ production going. It was great to see you all again and getting to spend time with you at your place. Who knew I was going to love badminton so much?! And the table tennis game – amazing! Can’t wait to work with you all again over the next few weeks leading up to the performance.
Then on Monday it was off to Blessed Robert Sutton, where we were lucky enough to get to work with the Year 9’s and the Sixth Formers. I really do hope a lot of you come to the briars next year because you were awesome! The school dinner was gorgeous!!! The afternoon that we spent with the Sixth Formers was so much fun and I loved being able to get involved in all the activities with you when exploring human rights.
Sinead
I had so much fun this weekend! It was great to see so many familiar faces of people who have visited the Briars before and people we met when out with Reach4.
I loved small group time with mine and Matt’s group, you guys were a lot of fun and made me laugh a lot when we were practicing acting out our part of the Nativity story. The clip we watched the next day of all the groups acting their parts out was hilarious and people pulled of those amazing helmets very well!
It was great how everyone really got into character on the walk where we had to play either Mary, Joseph or the donkey – I did feel sorry for the donkeys, but had a lot of fun playing Joseph. The walk was a great chace to talk to so many of you!
Watching Home Alone was definitely one of the highlights, along with the popcorn, and definitely didn’t fail to get me in the Christmas mood!
Thanks to everyone for such an amazing weekend…everything was so relaxed and fun; and I think whenwe got a visit from Santa with our affirmations we could see how good the weekend was for us all. And what better way to round off a fantastic weekend tn with an amazing christmas dinner for us all to tuck into!
Sinead
I have never felt so Christmassy as I did after this week! Over four days we did an Advent day in four schools.
On Monday we were at St Augustine Webster and you were all so welcoming from the very beginning in assembly. We had great fun playing ‘In the pond, Out the pond’ and I loved getting to know a lot of you better when making the boxes. The Advent Calendar the other class made was fantastic. I had so much fun doing the drama with some of you…you guys were awesome! Everyone did so well in Mass and it was great to have contributions from every class in the school.
I loved returning to my old school St Mary’s on Tuesday. Your breakfast club looked like so much fun…I wish I was there to play on the dance mat every morning! I could tell straight away from assembly it was going to be a great day, you were all full of enthusiasm and excitement. I had so much fun with all of you playing games to bring the Nativity story to life and loved our word of the day… ‘anticipation’. All of your drawings of the characters for the Advent Calendar were amazing and I hope you’ve all been sticking to the great promises you came up with. Thanks to everyone for their contributions to the Mass at the end of the day it was a great celebration to end a fantastic day!
It was a very early start on Wednesday to get to St Norbet’s but you guys definitely woke me up with your amazing singing of the songs with the word ‘gold’ in. The boxes you all made were really creative and looked great! I loved working with a few of you on making the stable for the Advent Calendar…the animal pen you made for it was a genius idea! I really enjoyed the Mass, especially all of the singing and dancing!
For our last Advent day we were at Hole Cross school. First of all…WOW… your Christmas tree was AMAZING! I absolutely loved how full of life you all were and I was so excited all day because we were having so much fun! The drawings you did for the cards that went in the Advent Calendar were fantastic… I love how you all jazzed them up by making them multicoloured or giving them cool clothes! Preparing the drama for Mass was a great laugh and you came up with an amazing idea…well done!
All of the schools we worked in were AMAZING and have really helped me to think about Advent and now I’m VERY excited for Christmas. Hope to see you all again!
Sinead
What a busy day! It was great to see some familiar faces today, and to get the chance to meet new people. All of the workshops looked amazing and you all really got involved and made the day so much fun! well done to everyone for doing so well on our game… it was frantic, but a lot of fun!
Sinead
This afternoon was so much fun! It was the first time we’d played the climate change game and you guys really went for it and made it very exciting. The pictures we all had and put on the website were awesome and the promises you all made were really powerful.
Well done for Mass everyone it was fantastic!
Sinead
It was so much fun today…especially the assembly when you all had different actions and sound effects for the words hope, love, peace and joy!
The boxes the Year 6’s made were really good and you all became experts at the game where we had to pass the squeeze along the line. i loved the Liturgy at the end of the day…all of the groups did really well.
Sinead
Today was amazing! I loved getting to work with so many of you! The gameshow we played with the Year 11’s was a lot of fun, especially watching the different teams turning themselves into a room in the house. It was great to get to spend some time with the sixth formers and well done to those of you who helped with the Year 6’s and 7’s in the afternoon.
Sinead
I really enjoyed today – thankyou to all of you for being so enthusiastic! I loved talking to all of you you were so friendly and welcoming. The ’speed dating’ we did at the beginning of the day was a great chance to get to know you all and you all made me laugh a lot.
Good luck with all the amazing work you do…you’ll all b fantastic!
Sinead
Thanks everyone for making this afternoon so much fun! We were only there for a few hours but we crammed so much in and it was a great afternoon.
You guys ar awesome… I really enjoyed chatting to you all and you were all full of so much energy it was impossible to be around you and not be smiling and having a good time.
Well done on managing to make the paper boxes so well… you can all say you can do origami now! I loved playing the hoop game with you all and you all did really well to see how all the games applied to how we work together in a community. You guys are part of such a great community and I loved gettin to spend an afternoon as part of that community!
It was great to see some familiar faces around the school of people who I met last year at the briars!
Sinead
