Our story

With a background in biology and more than twenty years working as a teacher I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the role of nature in education. As a biologist, I observed the principles of harmony, interdependence, diversity and adaptation, over and over again in the natural world. Everything is dependent on everything else; everything is part of a system.

The pandemic of 2020-21 really brought this home to us. Contrary to what modern Western culture tells us to believe, we humans cannot survive as individuals. We too, are dependent on many other things – we are part of something much bigger than ourselves.

My vision or ‘seed’, for Bloom was a strong feeling that education should have a bigger, overarching ideal for our young people. I can sum this up in one word: harmony. It already exists in the natural world and in the human heart, yet it is not evident in our schools.

The inspiration for this arose from the book Harmony, A new way of looking at our world, (HRH The Prince of Wales, 2010); as well as from The Harmony Project theharmonyproject.org.uk and the outstanding work in schools of its visionary, ground-breaking director, Richard Dunne.