October. 2018: Montessori St Nicholas Opening St John’s Wood Sheikh Rashid bin Khalifa Al Khalifa. How this came about is a bit of a coincidence. As media crew for Rashid Al Khalifa The Artist, we followed along at his request, not actually knowing what it was all about. At the time of this report, Sheikh Rashid had just opened his large, logistically complex Penumbra exhibition at the famous Saatchi Gallery in upmarket West London.
Among the invited guests, well… spot the royalty. Apart from many dignitaries, literally hundreds of general visitors to the gallery flooded in too. Two weeks into the exhibition and daily the crowds keep coming and not a bad critique so far. But we digress………
Art aficionados were plentiful and as eluded, spotted mingling was Princess Tessy De Nassau of Luxembourg and Princess Noal Zaher Shah of Afghanistan and Egypt. During conversations Sh. Rashid was asked if he would like to attend the opening of said Montessori St. Nicholas Charity Headquarters. Being the absolute gentleman that he is, he agreed and the rest is history.
So there it is, another Montessori establishment in the offing in leafy St. John’s Wood, North West London. Judging by the enthusiasm expounded by the management and teachers during the opening ceremony, there is a great deal of historic excitement about the actual location too, being more to the point the very house they now occupied was once the abode of the famous English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley.
Saying that, most of the Montessori pupils are distance learning or as it is now called; ‘eLearning’. Although it has to be said, seen at the opening were children in uniform and there are classrooms in this building as shown, so it was assumed to be a school, but apparently um..er… ugh… not quite.
