At Acorn we are committed to providing our staff with development opportunities, so as part of our four staff training days each year, we hold an organisational conference for our whole team.

On Tuesday 30th May all our staff across our nurseries, as well as our central support team gathered at the Ridgeway Centre in Milton Keynes and had a chance to professionally and personally connect with each other.

The conference begun with a wonderful welcome talk by Zoe Raven, our CEO and Professor Eva Lloyd, our Chair of Trustees, as well as a celebration of achievements within the organisation.

   

Every year we also welcome a keynote speaker and this year we were pleased to welcome Ben Kingston-Hughes who has over 30 years of experience working with children in a variety of settings and who is a winner of the 2019 National Playwork Awards, as well as the finalist for the Nursery World Trainer of the Year in 2020. Ben brought a wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm to the morning of our conference!

  

During the afternoon, we welcomed Vanessa Dooley who delivered a baby room specific course called ‘Brilliant Little Minds’, Dr. Stella Louis who delivered an extremely popular course on ‘Race, Inequality and Unconscious Bias’, Jules from the Signing Company who delivered a fantastic course on signing for babies, as well as many more trainers!

Thank you to all our trainers for providing inspiring and insightful training sessions!