The winners of this year’s GS Blackburn Travel Award and Friends Education Award have been announced as Laura (Class of 2022), and Year 13 students Mya, Iris, Georgia and Daisy.

The GS Blackburn Travel Award is open, biennially, to sixth formers and alumnae up to the age of 25 and is named after Gwendoline Blackburn, a former Headmistress of one of our founding schools, Bath High School, who was, in her day, the youngest Head ever appointed by GDST 80 years ago in 1942. Miss Blackburn was an inspirational and much-loved Head who had serious wanderlust always encouraging students to broaden their horizons, once mischievously advising them:

'...if you are ever left with a little money, don't put it in National Savings! Go to the open spaces of the desert, or the jagged red mountains of Petra...'

Laura, Mya and Iris have each secured GS Blackburn Travel Awards to help fund their varied travel adventures. Laura is currently studying Arts and Sciences with Spanish and will be undertaking extended travel in Argentina during the summer holidays following her year abroad attending Universidad de Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires from UCL.

Mya will be heading off to Zimbabwe during her gap year to fuel her lifelong passion about animals, especially horses, prior to reading veterinary science at university. Primarily, Mya will be taking part in to take part in a Worldwide Vets horse riding and wildlife conservation project alongside work at a ranch and undertaking some extended travel including exploring Victoria Falls and to the Zambesi.

Meanwhile Iris will be volunteering at a wildlife refuge centre in the beautiful Manu National Park, Peru, the most biologically diverse place on Earth, and plans to visit the Machu Picchu citadel and museum to satisfy her love of the Incas. With offers to study Biology at University next year, Iris intends to take zoology and conservation modules and has set her sights on a career in conservation.

Open to Year 12 ad Year 13 students annually the Friends Education Award offers students the opportunity to undertake an extra-curricular project, initiative or endeavour that will develop their personal education path or career aspirations. Georgia will be putting the funding she has secured towards publishing her Human Rights inspired EPQ Poetry Book: each poem represents one article and protocol from the European convention of Human rights, inspired by the writing of Sappho. Georgia’s poetry anthology's publication will be her first step in her journey to writing and publishing more poetry. She hopes its distribution will open other students’ eyes, both within the GDST and elsewhere, to the opportunities that can come from the EPQ and will inspire them to become empowered by their own creativity.

With her Friends Education Award Daisy will undertake a five-day Summer School in Musical Theatre at Trinity Laban in London to advance her in her aspirations to become a musical theatre performer prior to embarking on a foundation course at East 15 Acting School in the autumn. Daisy is already looking forward to returning to RHB in due course to share her Drama School experiences and inspire other RHB students to follow a similar path.

In due course, we very much look forward to sharing this year’s winners reports on how they have got on with their exciting projects.