In April 2021 Durham School undertook its first-ever Giving Day. It raised £72,000 from just shy of 350 donors. This was the culmination of a rebuilding process that had taken the best part of four years.
Development is not new to Durham, and in the modern era started at Durham School with its war memorial chapel built in the 1920s. This relied heavily on one major donor, Canon Budworth, and a myriad of ODs and parents to see the project finished. After that several other appeals were entered into over the years, some more successful than others.
When many other schools were starting to see the value of what is now broadly termed “advancement”, sadly Durham took some missteps – a story for another time – and relations with alumni and parents were not in a place to seek the support for bursaries that any school operating in the North East of England so clearly needs to provide, let alone the investment in new facilities.
Giving Day 21 was important because it showed that we were making progress – that alumni and parents believe in what we are trying to achieve as a School.
In September 2021 we officially merged with The Chorister School, and became Durham Cathedral Schools Foundation. Against this background Giving Day 2022 is an equally big test – we have more parents, more alumni (including Tony Blair and Rowan Atkinson not that we have well-cultivated links with them) and more challenges to face.
We want to support ex-cathedral choristers to continue their education at Durham School for instance, which is an entire new bursary programme all by itself.
We are going to build on what we learned in 2021, and move forwards to better things in 2022.