Boarding Round up

On the cultural front, there have been visits to The Fitzwilliam Museum with one of our graduate assistants, who is an art historian, and a classical music concert at Clare Hall College, at which the programme centrepiece was Quartet for the End of Time by the Twentieth Century French composer Olivier Messiaen. Whilst cinema visits have included Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Thor: Love and Thunder there have been local outings to see the Bonfire Night firework display on Midsummer Common and visits to the Botanic Garden.

On the morning of the 6 May, boarding students visited Ely. The Cathedral was open to the public, and they joined hundreds of others to watch the live-streaming of King Charles’ coronation ceremony on a big screen. The cathedral was decorated to mark the occasion with floral displays depicting the official Coronation emblem.

The boarders have undertaken numerous sporting activities including ten-pin bowling, archery and a visit to Grafham Water’s indoor climbing centre. They also participated in the boarders’ weekend badminton and basketball sessions, with many playing in the Sixth Form Basketball Team. In addition, seventeen boarders joined the school ski trip to Sestriere, Italy in December.

In-house activities have included karaoke evenings, board games nights and table football tournaments. Boarders gathered at Kirby’s Dining Room to celebrate the Lunar New Year festival over some delicious Asian snacks. Whilst some played Mah-jongg and others watched a film together, there was also the writing of good wishes for the New Year in Chinese calligraphy.

Denise Hammersley Head of Boarding

Year10

IGCSE Drama Trip to London

by Helene Barrell Head of

Drama

Our Year 10 Drama students had a fantastic day in London on Thursday 8 June. In the morning we had a very informative tour of The National Theatre on the Southbank, gaining insight into the history of the building, learning about its very different performance spaces and seeing first hand the various workshops and behind-the-scenes areas where props and sets are made. We saw the stage crew preparing the Olivier stage for a tech rehearsal of a new play about Gareth Southgate called ‘Dear England’ and some of us caught a glimpse of actors Joseph Fiennes (who will play Gareth Southgate) and Andrew Scott (who was just in the neighbourhood).

After lunch we watched an incredibly colourful and energetic matinee performance of the musical ‘Guys and Dolls’ at The Bridge Theatre. We had standing tickets for this immersive production directed by Nicholas Hytner: this meant that we were all right in the middle of the action, which our students absolutely loved. Some of them even took part in a danceoff at the end of the show. Afterwards we spotted one of the stars and he very kindly posed with our students for a photo (he is the one with the moustache!). All in all it was an extremely enjoyable day which we hope will enrich and inspire our drama students’ own performance work.