The Faculty of English & Drama
C
ovid led to some new projects in the English and Drama faculty, making good use of the new technology we had started using during lockdown. As we were unable to host our annual Black History Month show, we instead hosted a range of podcasts made by students and staff about Black brilliance in a range of fields. We enjoyed a podcast a day for the month of October, many associated with our school subjects or our student led societies, ranging from the myths from different African countries to Germany’s colonial past to role models in science. Alongside this we also produced our Black History Month magazine with a range of fascinating articles written by students. Educational and entertaining, they were a wonderful opportunity for us all to learn more. Ms Smith has continued to grow the Feminist Society which has flourished this year, with students from across the year groups take part in fascinating discussions and talks relevant to the position of women across the world today. A particular highlight was the webinar organised by Ms Smith and Year 13 student Camille Saunders, and we thank them for their work on this. We continued using podcasts for International Women’s day, and for each day in March staff made a podcast focusing on their favourite female writer. We hoped this would introduce students to new writers and encourage everyone to increase the diversity of their reading. We enjoyed hearing more about poets, novelists and journalists. We also began our reading around the world project which aimed to focus on a different continent each half term. Each week students would be sent a short story or poem by a writer from a country in that half term’s continent. We all know we can be guilty of living in echo chambers in our reading as well as our lives, so this was an opportunity to explore other cultures and perspectives. Martha Hodgson excelled as our Poet Laureate for 2021 with some fantastic original work. Students also had an opportunity to enjoy more poetry through workshops with Kazzum 21 poetry, and took part in poetry competitions. Our playwriting group wrote some lovely plays for the National Theatre New Views competition, with five students being long listed and one of our students from the previous year, Aran Grover, being shortlisted for the play he wrote while in Year 13. His play received a rehearsed reading with professional actors that we were able to watch via zoom. With trips being impossible we made use of The National Theatre
54 – Olavian 2021
online and other streaming opportunities. Literature Society has also been going strong with quizzes and presentations on ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and Nonsense Language. Thank you to Crystal Nettey, Martha Hodgson and Elise Stringfellow for their leadership. We have also been working hard to develop our schemes of work to make them more engaging for our students through increasing the diversity and making more links to the real world, Finally I would like to extend an enormous thank you to the rest of the English department for their professionalism and tireless work this year, particularly in regards to the tag process for GCSE and A Level.
Alexandra Wilkie S___Head of Faculty
Newsquest Young Reporters Congratulations to Martha Hodgson for being one of the winners of the Newsquest Young Reporters scheme. The students had to write articles on local stories, meet deadlines and hone their journalistic writing skills. Playwriting Group Our students have enjoyed two workshops with the playwright Jennifer Farmer. They have looked at ways of building characters from the items they carry in their pockets, to their childhood memories to create someone who is convincing to the audience. Jennifer also helped them to explore the world of their play and consider how their character fits into it. This was a great opportunity for our students, and we thank the National Theatre for this. Poet Laureate It is time to thank James Perry, our Poet Laureate for 2020, and announce his successor for 2021. We had a superb range of entries responding to the BLM movement, the Trump administration and of course the Coronavirus pandemic and dealing with lockdown. We had such a fantastic response that we have decided to have one Poet Laureate and two Poetry Ambassadors, with each Ambassador receiving £50. Congratulations to our new Ambassadors, Arjun Thakar and Joseph Davies, and to our Poet Laureate 2021, Martha Hodgson. We
