Stocks-Review-Summer-2023

| Summer 2023 | 05

Ibstock Place Stocks Review

Pandora Melly (Vaughan)

Pupil at Ibstock, 1966–1971

Pandora Melly (Pandora Vaughan) attended Ibstock Place from 1966 to 1971. She fondly remembers her primary school teacher, Mrs Wilmshurst, who taught History and Geography. One lesson on Ancient Egypt was especially memorable. Mrs Wilmshurst livened up the lesson with ephemera and photographs from a recent trip she had taken to Egypt with her husband. Pandora recalls one particular photograph in which ‘our teacher [was] looking dusty and exhausted… the husband’s long shadow snaking across the rocks upon which she sat’. She had brought an orange from Egypt for the pupils to sample and a bottle of coloured sand-art with a camel and a pyramid crafted into its design. Wistfully, Pandora remarks upon the considerable impact this teacher had on her life: ‘Her pupils have grown into elderly men and women who may or may not remember oranges and camels painted in sand, and an afternoon of extraordinary photographic slides shown in the dark, wood-lined sarcophagus of our classroom’. Since leaving Ibstock Place, Pandora has embraced several different roles, precipitated by her omnivorous appetite for learningand experience. In the early 1970s shewas involved in farming and horse husbandry. She attended art school in the late 1980s and cultivated creative skills which were utilised in many later roles. Indeed, she wrote and taught courses for adults and children on and off over the last thirty years, includinga successful course for students at the Royal College of Surgeons on ‘The Art of Reconstruction’. In this class, students dived into anatomy through art as they learnt to draw and recreate what they saw. She taught a companion course at the Royal College of Art on ‘Art and Anatomy’ which looked at the form and function of heads and linked creative representation to neurological function. Besides her educationalist interests, Pandora has also worked as a journalist for The Independent and other publications. She has, further, created voice-overs for commercials, started a law conversion course and worked as a dog-trainer. Her careers, like her academic interests, have been varied and enriching. Her interdisciplinary interests were especially facilitated by her education at Ibstock Place in her primary school years. She notes, ‘Ibstock taught me to question “how” and “why” which I believe are two of the most important questions from pupils, and I wish all education was that good’.

Photos: Recent photos of Pandora.