Roman Collage with Class 2 at Staples Road

I spent two very noisy and busy hours with Class 2 at Staples Road today working on making collages. This is the third week that I have been at Staples Road on a Thursday afternoon, each week working with a different class to make Roman buildings using collage.

All three classes so far have done remarkabley well and we are beginning to gather quite a number of buildings! I have two more classes to work with in the lower school before we will put all the buildings together in a frieze to create a Roman city.

Talent Show Finalists Announced!

This Friday (2nd May) Roding Valley High is hosting the final of an inter-school Talent Show with acts from RVHS, Debden Park High School and West Hatch High School. The event is part of the Loughton Festival 2008 and will see 21 acts compete to win trophies for their schools.


The Contest will be judged in 3 seperate categories - dance, drama and music and looks to be a great few hours of entertainment!

At Roding Valley alone over 30 acts auditioned with 7 going through to Friday's final. I can now reveal, hot of the press, that the finalists are:

• The Day Glo Freaks - band from years 7 and 10
• Le Petit Pomme de Terre - dance group from year 8
• The Wilkeys - Duet on guitar and vocals from years 8 and 10
• Ellen Cameron - Solo Dance from year 9
• Lizzie Mitchell - Monologue from year 9
• Jake Lee - On vocals and piano from year 10
• Danielle Barton and Holly Kinsella from year 10 singing a duet a capella
  

The standard of the auditions was really high and it was no easy task picking the finalists, especially since it was important to have a range of acts and age groups to represent our school.

So now it is a mad rush to get all the other bits of organisation done for Friday's final, in amongst GCSE showcases and practical exams that are taking place in the school!

Jen

The Launch of the long-awaited blog!

Hello and welcome to the first post on our new Community Arts blog!

I have been working here at the school since the middle of January and one of the things on my "to do list" since then has been to start up a blog... well finally I've gotten around to it!

I would really like for this blog to be interactive and it would be great to have as many students and participants as possible able to add to posts and to leave comments. I am working through the logistics of this and will get back to you with more information as soon as I can!

For just now let me fill you all in on what I've been up to over the past little while...

The second week of the Easter break was jammed packed with Performing Arts Workshops that were run in the Drama Studio here at RVHS. I delivered these sessions along with visiting practitioner Ian Black who is a student up at East 15.

I think the general consensus was that everyone had a lot of fun as well as learning some new skills and making some new friends.

I am also working in Oak View School on a Tuesday afternoon with Red Class. We are exploring the forest using movement and music and we're hoping to incorporate some visual art into the sessions too. The pupils have been doing fabulously well in the two sessions we have had so far and they seem to be enjoying the work we are doing which we are building on little by little every week. It is hoped that we will be able to create a short DVD to track the pupils progress throughout the project.

Thursday afternoons are very exciting for me at the moment as I am working in Staples Road Junior School with years 3 and 4 to create Roman buildings using collage. This project has been a real challenge for me as I have not led a visual arts project since I was in my first year at university but it seems to be going really well and I am thoroughly enjoying working with the young people to create what we hope will end up as a frieze of a Roman City.

I round the week off in Alderton Junior School on a Friday afternoon doing drama and movement based on The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. Last week was the first week of this project which is going to culminate in an informal sharing of work between the three year 5 classes. So far the young people have shown some really fantastic pieces of movement and I am looking forward to seeing what we can come up with together.

So, that's a little taster of what I'm up to at the moment. The final heats of for the Inter-School Talent Show are tomorrow so I will be back to let you know the outcome of that!

Jen