Grand Opening of 'Sense-ational' Monday 19th November 2018.

The Grand Opening of ‘Sense-ational’ will be taking place on Monday 19th November at 12.30pm, with the official cutting of the ribbon at 12.30pm by the Mayor of Taunton.  The shop is at 56 High Street, Taunton (next to Tesco Express and opposite Hatchers).

 This is an innovative collaboration between Somerset County Council, Taunton Deane Council, Young Somerset, Somerset SENse, all our Somerset Special Schools and Humberts Estate Agents. 

 Students and Staff from all our Somerset Special Schools and Young Somerset have worked with our councils and the town’s commercial sector to organise and run a pop-up shop at 56 High Street, Taunton, where our students will run and manage the shop selling all the high-quality goods that they have been making over many months.  Goods include paintings, cards, knitwear, Christmas decorations, furniture, etc.

 This is the culmination of the extensive long-term work being undertaken with our Special Schools to support our young people and their families to show them and our communities, particularly our Somerset employers, that they can have a future that includes meaningful and long-term employment opportunities.  This is our hidden workforce and time after time we are showing that these young people make the very BEST employees.

 This project is a great example of collaborative working, supporting the project with staff expertise, support and resources, administration support to enable us to lease the shop, Humberts have helped us persuade a landlord to give us their premises for free and our Special Schools are working hard to make goods and prepare their young people to manage and run the shop.

 We believe that this shop is the first of its kind in the South-West, if not nationally, where students have been involved in all stages of the project and we really want to showcase this shop in our county town, Taunton, before taking the concept around to other Somerset towns, including Yeovil, Frome, Bridgwater and Street.

 Through this project students have the opportunity to develop their communication and team-work skills, financial and enterprise skills as well as developing their own self-confidence, all really important skills for their future working life.

 We really hope that our Taunton community will support our Sense-ational Shop which will be in Taunton, trading in the run-up to Christmas and will be visiting the Quedam Centre in Yeovil from March to May 2019.