Town, the club’s Community Trust and the Ipswich Town Heritage Society are partnering to develop an educational programme for schools based on the Blues’ history.
Today is National Sporting Heritage Day, organised by the Sporting Heritage organisation, with the theme Inspire, share and celebrate.
The focus is on activities and learning across generations, including inspiring young people to learn about their sporting heroes and historic sporting moments.
The programme is inspired by St Helen’s Primary School’s initiative aimed at developing the skills and knowledge of seven-to-nine year-olds through activities covering the history of the club and the town of Ipswich.
The ITFC Heritage Society and Community Trust worked closely with the school to support the project, which provided fun and challenging opportunities for the youngsters to study subjects key to the National Curriculum including geography, history, art and English, whilst linking them to football.
In addition to learning at school, the pupils walked to Portman Road for a morning of Town-related activities, including sketching the statues of Sir Alf Ramsey and Sir Bobby Robson, having previously made models of them having watched a video message from sculptor Sean Hedges-Quinn.
Following a mini-tour of the stadium, they spent time with club archivist Pat Godbold, secretary to Ramsey, Robson and other Town managers up to George Burley, and Elizabeth and Tim Edwards from the Heritage Society, where they were shown artefacts including a replica of the FA Cup and retro boots and balls, before a football session on the Fieldturf and a question and answer session with CEO Mark Ashton.
The programme will see these activities expanded and tailored to the individual needs of schools and groups, as well as adapted to create opportunities for the Trust and Town's similar work with older fans.
The Blues' PR manager Dan Palfrey told the club site: "This is a great way for us to extend our schools activities into new areas of the core curriculum. The pilot programme with St Helen’s School was fun and informative for both the club and school, and we look forward to working with new partner schools in the future.”
Community Trust’s schools development manager Mike Phillips added: "We hope that our partner schools will find this an exciting way to engage pupils with the history of the club and surrounding areas.”
ITFC Heritage Society’s Elizabeth Edwards said: "It is wonderful to be able to demonstrate — to pupils of all ages - how there is a shared history of club and town, and how the two grew and changed together.
"Being able to show many historic artefacts and talk about the experience of following football many decades ago is also a great way to engage youngsters.”
Any schools interested in having the trust working within it school should contact Mike Phillips via mike.phillips@itfc.co.uk.