A Pinch of Spice also known as APOS is an annual fundraising charity event that is a yeary tradition, it started in 2016 by Year 11s in Newstead Wood’s Afro-Carribean Society. Due to Covid, the event couldn’t happen, and several students missed the chance at experiencing it and/or holding the evnt themselves, that’s why this year, the Year 12s worked alongside the Year 11s to hold an event that would be as amazing as before.
On February 3rd, at Newstead Wood, the annual APOS event was finally held after Covid. There were so many amazing acts from Newstead themselves including four Y10 dancers, a whole Y11 dance, dancing sister duos, singing and many more. Food was cooked and handed out by aunties which had an array of Afro- Carribean dishes such as fried chicken jerk chicken, rice and peas, plantain and e.t.c. There were also amazing guest stars like Charlenethepoet also known as Kerboodlemynoodle from tiktok who recited some poems as well as Tidez, Drigyy and more artists and dancers. This years’ charity that was supported was the JAGS foundation, there were also other fundrasing events that happened during the school day in order to raise money for the event and send proceeds to the foundation; there was a bake sale on the 19th January that raised £146.67.
JAGS foundation is a charity that addresses violence in communities that are harmed by violence, JAGS which stands for James Andre Godfrey Smartt-Ford was set up by James's mother, Tracey Ford, following his murder. They were very grateful for the event, for more information on the charity the link is https://www.jagsfoundation.org/who-we-are and their instagram is @Jags Connect, where they have videos of a few of the performances.
On the day there was a surplus of people that filled up Newstead’s hall and lots of support from everyone whilst people were performing. I personally, was amazed by the fashion show. Many of the pieces that were worn were created by Newstead’s own Textile students, of which many being at GCSE level. One thing I would say needed improvement was the organisation for the event, the deadlines were very short and tight for performance preparation and the way they handled the distribution of food was very hectic, instead of having a set of instructions for people to file in, there were only people advising how to get the food which wasn’t very effective on a hungry crowd. Efe Aisabokhale, one of the dancers who performed on the night spoke on how she thought APOS was, “It was definitely fun and showed Afro- Caribbean talent; the performances were great. However, it was very unorganised considering there were months to plan the event causing it to become very stressful for us because of time management, but the event on a whole was very cool and they managed to get some famous people.”
Hopefully, any disagreements with the way APOS was handled this year is worked on for next year but considering the setback from Covid restrictions, this year’s APOS was a good start for the resuming of the annual event.
