The David Ross Education Trust

The David Ross Education Trust is a large multi-academy trust with 34 sites spread across the UK. The Trust has both primary and secondary schools as well as one special educational needs provider. Each school has it’s own identity under the overarching umbrella of the Trust.

Ahead of the summer 2022 term, the Marketing and Communications Department released a public tender to provide photographic shoots across all their sites. Previously some of the schools within the Trust had sourced their own photography, whilst others had relied on pictures teachers had taken as part of the course of recording pupils’ progress. The Marketing and Communications Department wanted to develop a fresh library of images with a standardised style, which would portray the range of schools and their pupils which could be used on individual school’s websites and prospectuses, as well as content produced from the Head Office. The department managed the project centrally to ensure confidence that the images were of a consistent approach, style and standard. They could also maintain safeguarding practices by ensuring students had photographic permissions.

Submitting a tender document was something which was a fairly new experience to me having not bid for work on this scale previously. I approached completing the document in much the same way as I do when writing

a normal photographic proposal by demonstrating my approach to photography and my belief that the images I produce for my clients really add value to their marketing content. It was during the tender writing process, and the requirement for all the shoots to be completed before the end of the summer term, that I realised I would need an additional photographer to work with me on the project. I recruited Alex whom I have known for several years and was familiar with his standard of work and his attitude. The fact that he is based in a different area of the country, made it more logical to divide up the sites between the two of us.

Following notification of the success of my tender bid and signing the contract and data sharing agreement, it was imperative to start working with Alex and the Trust’s Marketing and Communications Department in order to get to know each other, work out the logistics of the shoots and start the planning process. It was essential that Alex was involved in the conversations to give him the best brief possible on the shoots and what was required.

For each shoot, as well as a standard shot list, each school was given the opportunity to add image requests to the brief which they felt were important to their school. As with any photographic shoot, the challenge is to get alongside those whom you are photographing, in this case, the teachers, support staff and pupils, in order to make them feel at ease. At each school, we also utilised the drone to capture aerial images of the school and sports fields, a dimension which hadn’t been undertaken by the Trust before, It was envisaged that these aerial images would be a powerful way of showcasing the additional facilities and space to potential future parents, especially as sports enrichment is important to the Trust.

Although we worked individually, it was important that Alex and I kept in regular contact throughout the project to support each other. In order to ensure consistency was being delivered, we shared a sample shoot with each other so that we could compare and contrast the sort of images we were producing.

With a busy schedule of photo shoots, it was agreed to deliver the processed images ready to be used in early September as the schools returned from their summer break. Each shoot was uploaded to an individual password-protected gallery in the client area of the Chris Vaughan Photography website. A hidden collection containing all 34 shoots was also created to simplify accessing pictures for the Marketing and Communications Department. Initially, these links and passwords were only shared with the Marketing and Communications Department. From that point, the Department tasked each school with reviewing the images against the photographic permissions database: firstly, as a safety net; and secondly, to ensure no pupil’s permissions status had altered over the summer break.

The result of a busy six weeks of photography in the glorious weather experienced in the summer of 2022 has resulted in The David Ross Education Trust having a library of more than 6,000 images to use across all of their marketing and publicity material moving forward.

Amy Lockwood, EA to the CEO and directors of dducation, said: