A group of talented college students have pulled out all the stops to ensure that sick children who are spending the festive period in hospital get a Christmas visit they’ll never forget.

With Santa due to make a visit to the new Redcar Primary Care Hospital, the students from Redcar & Cleveland College’s Carpentry, Painting & Decorating and Art & Design courses worked together to construct a sleigh to transport the man himself around the wards.

Carpentry and joinery students led by tutor Keith Smith, set about constructing a sleigh that would enable Santa to make his way around the wards delivering presents, whilst students in the college’s Art and Design department held a competition to design the shape and colour scheme for the finished sleigh.

Working in partnership, they managed to complete the sleigh in time for Santa’s visit during the official opening of the hospital on Friday 9th December.

Amongst the students who took part in the project were Painting and Decorating students Nikki Boutell, Laurie White and Robert Sharkey; Art & Design student Emiley Jones; Decorating apprentices Craig Goodall and Gary Langer; and Joinery students Mathew Whitehead and Derek Harland.

Painting and decorating student, Laurie, said:

“This has been a fantastic project to take part in and we’ve all got a great sense of achievement seeing the finished sleigh.

“We hope that the kids enjoy seeing it as much as we enjoyed building it.”