A decision, not an omission
Why there is not a single child in any photograph here
Every image on this website shows a room, a material, a meal or an adult. That is deliberate, and the reasoning is the same reasoning that shapes what we send home at the end of a day.
There are no children in any photograph on this site. There is not a single child in any photograph on this website. Every image here shows our rooms, our materials, our food or our educators, and that is a decision rather than a gap in the budget. Marketing photographs of children are somebody else's children, used to sell a place to you; and a daily app photograph of a smiling child tells you about one second of a nine-hour day and nothing about the other thirty-two thousand. What we send home instead is a written note about sleep, food, mood and what actually happened, from the person who was in the room.
Scroll this site and you will notice something missing. Nursery websites are built out of photographs of children — laughing at a water tray, concentrating on a puzzle, being held. Ours has none, and the absence is the point rather than a gap in the budget.
Two arguments sit behind it. One is about whose children those are. The other is about what a photograph of a child is actually capable of telling you, which turns out to be much less than the daily-photo app industry has persuaded a generation of parents.
Whose children are in nursery marketing
Somebody's. Either they are enrolled children, photographed under a consent form signed at enrolment by a parent who was signing eleven other things at the same time, or they are stock images of children who have nothing to do with the setting at all.
Consent given in a stack of enrolment paperwork is consent in a weak sense. A parent settling a nine-month-old is not, at that moment, weighing where an image of their child might sit in five years, on what surfaces, in front of whom. And the child, who is the person actually in the photograph, was not asked and could not have been.
The images on this site were generated rather than photographed, which removes the consent problem and replaces it with a different one we are not interested in either: producing photorealistic images of children who do not exist, at volume, to sell a service. The straightforward answer to both is not to do it.
What we would be showing you anyway
The environment is the thing you are actually buying and the thing we actually control. The light in a room, the height of a shelf, whether the yard has shade at noon, whether lunch is cooked here or arrives in a van — those are decisions somebody made, and photographs of them are photographs of the product.
A child's face in a nursery photograph is telling you that a child was happy in the second the shutter opened. It is not nothing. It is very close to nothing about the nine hours around it.
This is also, and we should be honest that it is convenient, the way design-led early-years brands have gone for years. It reads calmer, it dates better, and it does not make the site look like every other nursery site in the borough. That it is also the right call does not make it a sacrifice.
The daily photo app, and what it replaced
Most nurseries now send parents a stream of photographs through an app, several a day, and parents love them. We understand why: you are apart from your child for nine hours and the photograph is a window.
What it displaced is worth noticing. A photograph is generated in a second by an adult holding a phone, which means an adult who was, for that second, holding a phone rather than being available. Multiply by a room and a day and the cost is not nothing.
And it selects. Nobody photographs the twenty minutes a child spent unsettled after a nap, or the fact that they ate almost nothing at lunch, or that they have shadowed the same other child for a fortnight. Those are the things that would actually change what you do this evening, and they do not photograph.
What we send home instead
A written note, from the person who was in the room, about sleep, food, mood, nappies or toilet, and one specific thing that happened. Specific means naming what your child did rather than that they had a lovely day.
The awkward parts included. If they were unsettled, if they did not eat, if there was an incident with another child, that is in the note on the day rather than mentioned in passing at the end of the week.
And a conversation at the door for anything that needs one. A note is a record; a handover is a conversation, and the second is where the useful part usually happens.
What we do photograph, and where it goes
Children are photographed and their work is photographed, for their own record — the observations that inform what we plan for them and the book that goes home with them at the end of their time here. That is documentation of a child's learning and it belongs to that child and family.
It does not go on this website, into advertising, onto social media or into a brochure. Those are different acts with different purposes, and a consent form that covers the first should not be read as covering the rest.
If you would rather your child were not photographed at all, that is a straightforward request and it changes nothing about their day.
In order
How this works in practice
Notice what a nursery's photographs are for
Documentation for a family and marketing for a business are different things. Ask which consent you are giving, and whether they are separable.
Ask whether you can decline marketing use only
You should be able to say yes to a learning record and no to a website without it becoming awkward. If the form does not separate them, ask why.
Ask what the daily update contains
Sleep, food, mood and one specific thing is a useful update. A photograph and an emoji is a pleasant one.
Ask whether bad days are reported
The test of a communication system is whether it carries the unwelcome things. Ask for an example of a difficult message they have sent a parent.
Judge the rooms in the photographs
Where a site does show its rooms, look at them properly — the light, the shelf height, the sightlines, whether the yard has shade. That is the part that is genuinely about your child's day.
Questions we are actually asked
Why there is not a single child in any photograph here — frequently asked
Why are there no children on this website?
Because every image of a child in nursery marketing is a real child being used to sell something, consented to by somebody other than themselves — and because generating photorealistic images of children who do not exist, at volume, to sell a service is not a better answer. The rooms, materials and food are what you are buying and they photograph honestly.
Do you photograph children at all?
Children and their work are photographed for their own learning record, which informs what we plan and goes home with them. That is a different act from marketing, and the images do not go on this site, into advertising or onto social media.
Can I ask for my child not to be photographed?
Yes, and it is a straightforward request rather than a difficult one. It changes nothing about their day or how they are treated.
Do you use a daily photo app?
No. We send a written note about sleep, food, mood and one specific thing that happened, from the adult who was in the room, and it includes the difficult parts. A photograph tells you about the second it was taken; the note is about the day.
Isn't a photo reassuring though?
Yes, genuinely, and we are not dismissive of that. The difficulty is that reassurance and information are not the same thing, and a stream of happy photographs can coexist with a fortnight in which your child ate almost nothing at lunch. We would rather tell you the second thing.
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Tuesday and Thursday mornings, while the children are here
Come and see the room
A tour here happens during a session, in the room your child would actually be in, at the time of day they would be in it. You meet the person who leads that room rather than only the director, and you see the noise and the mess that are genuinely there. It takes an hour. If your child is three or four we will ask whether you have applied for free 3-K or Pre-K for All before we quote you a rate, because a good many families should not be paying us at all.