Abbs Cross School, Commitment to Opportunity and Excellence
Performing Arts Faculty
Highlights of the last year in the life of the Performing Arts Faculty have included the Christmas Event with its many talented pupils and staff; the annual Musical which this year was “Oliver” which exceeded all expectations; the Dance performances at the 02 centre and Queen’s Theatre – and winning the Junior Dance prize at the Havering Dance Festival (the first time that any school other than Sacred Heart had won it!); music performances, at the Queen’s Theatre and the National Festival of Music for Youth and pupils from Benhurst attending our junior orchestra rehearsals and Grace Warren winning Junior Young Musician of the Year (the second year running that one of our wonderful musicians has won this accolade)
The event that has really summed up the influence of the arts in the school has been our annual Artsweeks.
This year on the Tuesday each department in the school taught their subject through the arts. Activities ranged from “The Apprentice ” in English to “Samba” in Geography; from “Puppet Theatre” in SEN to “Musical Theatre” in Dance/Drama.
Wednesday saw 580 students and staff travelling to the Dominion Theatre in Tottenham Court Road for a performance of “We Will Rock You.” No other school attempts such a mass visit to a London theatre and, once again, it was a great success with the manager of the theatre finding time to send us an e-mail congratulating the school on such good behaviour from all our children.
Thursday saw our second “Community Arts Day”. . Over 250 year 5 pupils from our six partner junior schools joined us for the day to be taught by our arts staff who had given up their day with their forms at Chessington to take part in the day. But, not to be outdone by the innovations of last year, we added two new initiatives this year. The first was the introduction of Gamelan to our programme. The London Symphony Orchestra lent us their Gamelan (an Indonesian percussion orchestra) which we used on Community Arts Day and also on the following day when we were able to invite GCSE classes from our partner secondary schools to make use of it. The other new initiative was the Havering Wider Opportunities scheme which saw 150 Year 5s from around Havering taking part in a mass performance which included impressive arrays of tubas, trombones, tenor horns and all sorts of other instruments. A truly amazing sound!
We have forged close links with our junior and secondary partner schools. Highlights have included visits by our primary partners to see our Christmas Event and annual musical and summer concerts. There have been performances in a number of our junior partner schools. The highlight of the year was the Havering Junior Music Festival at the Queen’s Theatre in June which included items from each of the schools taking part and a mass choir was accompanied by a junior Abbs Cross Ensemble. A memorable occasion.
Thanks, as always, to our incredibly hard working staff in the Performing Arts Faculty who give up so much of their time to devote to the arts in our school. Mrs Burkett and Ms Carson in Art; Mrs Bird and Miss Smith in Dance; Miss Hughes and Miss Sweeting in Drama and Mr Bottone and Miss Lyus (our irrepressible GTP student teacher this year). Also to Ron Knights, Performing Arts Technician and Michelle De Gutis, Art Technician for all their hard work during the year. Sadly we said goodbye to Mr Bottone who is moving on to school in Bedforchshire and he goes with our best wishes and thanks for all he has done in the three years with us and we welcome Mrs Underwood joined us as Head of Music in September 2009
Mr M.C. Henderson
Director of Performing Arts