During the week commencing 20 June, we took the opportunity to showcase the wonderful talent of our students in our annual Arts Week!
We love hosting this annually, as it’s a fantastic occasion to celebrate the students’ artistic flair and hard work throughout the year. Not only is the celebration a memorable experience for everyone, but it also consistently proves to be the perfect opportunity to broaden pupils’ skills and interests within the arts, promoting creativity and confidence. Previously, we have welcomed talented guests such as authors Pippa Goodhart and Ross Welford into Northampton High, to join us in our week-long celebration and kindly offer their expertise.
Kick-starting this wonderful week of all things artistic, we welcomed Dave Shelton, an award-winning author, illustrator and cartoonist into school. After a fascinating presentation about his journey to success in book writing and his life-long passion for drawing, Year 6 & 7 were invited to a cartooning workshop to experience his expertise first-hand. Inspired by his work and enthusiastic to put their own creative skills to the test, everyone was eager to learn different illustration methods in a cartooning master-class. This was a great opportunity for our students to learn new techniques and engage with a successful artist!
With the week off to an inspiring start, we were thrilled to invite visitors into school for our Arts Festival on the evening of Tuesday 21 June. This marquee event is always one of the most anticipated events in the school calendar, and Mrs Beacroft, her team and our wonderful students vowed to pull out all the stops to make this year’s event our best ever! In the glorious June sunshine, our two courtyards were transformed to showcase outstanding Drama performances, including ‘Romeo & Juliet’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ pieces. Further theatrical pieces were performed indoors, with Year 9 ’DNA’ and Year 10 Component 1 performances being real highlights of the night! The excellence of our pupils continued to shine through to deliver a marvelous array of Musical entertainment, beginning with a beautiful Senior School Choir performance followed by instrumental pop up performances that played throughout the festival. Our Food & Nutrition and Fashion & Textiles classrooms were also a hive of activity, with Miss Knight on hand in the Food classroom leading wonderful workshops, and The White Space proudly displaying the exceptional pieces of textile work our students have completed over the past year. We were proud to display a huge variety of work in the outstanding Art & Design exhibitions that decorated our many halls and classrooms. There was something to suit all artistic tastes, with paintings, drawings, sculptures, print and so much more on display for guests to enjoy!
An unforgettable week was completed with our productions of ‘Seussical the Musical’. The Dr. Seuss-inspired production, led by Mrs Marriott and her wonderful team, was a collaborative effort that involved students from across the Senior School. The entire Arts Department contributed their expertise to create an incredible set, imaginative outfits and impeccable performances. On Wednesday 22 June, we were delighted to welcome students from Delapre primary, along with our own Junior School pupils, for the first showing of the production, ahead of the evening finale on Thursday 23 June. The large crowd were truly stunned by the unbelievable talent, hard-work and dedication that had gone into creating such a professional and exciting performance! A huge ‘well done’ to everyone involved in ensuring such an exceptional night for all!
After a week of creativity and joy, the talent of our Northampton High School students continues to amaze the school community. Moving forward from what has been a challenging couple of years, it was truly marvellous to have so many guests and visitors back in the school to celebrate the immense amount of hard work that has gone into producing such wonderful art. Thank you to all who attended and showed their encouragement, we can’t wait to welcome you back for next year’s Arts Week!
