Norman Cook, AKA Fatboy Slim, BBC presenter Juliet Sargeant and Paralympic champion Will Bayley joined primary school students in East Sussex with a series of career focused talks.

Over the past week, speakers from across screens, music, sport and industry visited Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Primary School, in Rottingdean, as part of its new Career+ programme. Part of Career+ is the primary school’s Career Ax!s initiative, bringing together industry leading speakers to share their personal career stories, while showcasing ‘the possible’ in the future of Ai.

Over the course of four days, year five and six students were treated to talks from:

• Cherise Currie – Professional makeup artist. Finalist in Glow Up series 7
• Lyndsey Hermann – Head of Community Programmes | Brighton & Hove Albion Foundation
• Peter Deadman – Cofounder of Infinity Foods, renowned author and qigong teacher
• Will Bayley – Rio 2026 Paralympic gold medallist and Strictly Come Dancing contestant
• Juliet Sargeant – Award winning garden designer, author and regular contributor to variety of BBC and ITV gardening programmes
• Kiersten Simmons – Hospital Doctor and Medical Researcher NHS Sussex. Previously volunteer for MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres) in Zimbabwe
• Marc Author – Campaigner, co-founder of All Party Parliamentary Dog Welfare group and renowned vet
• JP Omari – Founder of Streetfunk a multi award winning street dance school. JP is a multi-award winning HipHop dancer, teacher, coach and choreographer

Rounding off the talks was Norman Cook, who joined the children for an inspiring and highly personal hour-long in conversation through his career from school, working in Rounder Records, to the present day. After meeting students, Norman Cook said: “It’s the least I can do to share how I’ve navigated 40 years in music. From age eight, it was my dream to work in music and I’m lucky enough to achieved that goal. I just wanted to get over its cool to not have a clear dream job at an early age. It will make sense when it arrives. Then just say yes a lot and give it a real go. If your dream is worth pursuing, then it’s worth taking the knocks”.

Paralympic table tennis champion Will Bayley added: “Today was brilliant fun coming to the school I could tell that the children were inspired by all the great speakers. They were unbelievably well behaved and felt they really listened so well”

Ted, one of the children said: “The last week has been awesome and so inspiring. The advice given and stories from these brilliant people was just magical. They were all so passionate about what they do and so encouraging. I still can’t believe they came to our school.”

Career Ax!s followed on from the InBusiness Challenge that year five children have been enjoying in recent weeks, where the children have created and are running five separate business ideas from Happy Jars, to a photobooth, to Sunny Sips fresh lemonade, fresh pastries and yummy milkshakes.

Anita Philbrook, Headteacher at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Primary School, said: “After the recent launch of the InBusiness Challenge, and now these talks, we are so proud of our commitment as a school to new ways of learning, and providing valuable insights for our students. I want to place a huge thank you to all of our Career Ax!s speakers, who wowed our pupils with not only their presence in our village school, but their inspiring stories powerful knowledge about the future professional landscape.”

To find out more about the school, visit https://ourladyoflourdesprimaryschool.co.uk