AN artistic teaching assistant has spent lockdown creating a work of art using the natural world to depict the love and care her school has for its pupils and staff.

Rachel Hodgkins has made the emotive piece by machine embroidering designs from scraps of material, with a centrepiece of three birds representing Wilden All Saints Primary School’s key stage one and two and early years, each with a wing out supporting the other.

The school’s values are embroidered in each leaf, each bee represents a teacher, each blossom a teaching assistant and the seeds are the support staff. The silver shiny threads on the bee tails spell out Mrs Fishwick, the name of their beloved headteacher who died from cancer earlier this year.

Acting head of school Charlotte McDonald said: “We are so grateful to Mrs Hodgkins. This is a beautiful, heartfelt piece of work which piece of work which truly encapsulates what our school is about and will certainly take pride of place here.”