SMC debaters selected for Canterbury Development Squad and our Middle School Choir joins other independent schools for the inaugural Encore Choral Festival, while excitement grows for Grimm Tales.

CSDC Development Squad
Congratulations to Hattie Compton-Moen and Lucy Jessep who have been selected for the Canterbury Schools’ Debating Council Development Squad, alongside Andrew Garbett and Imogen McNeill from St Andrews College and Lily Shields and Oli Price from Cashmere High. The Development Squad will foster the students’ development through additional training sessions and opportunities to debate.

Christchurch Music Festival
Congratulations to Cesca Harris and Imogen Masters from Year 7, who have been selected for the Senior Special Choir, and Connie Newton, Year 5, who will join the Junior Special Choir in this year’s Festival. The girls will perform each night alongside primary and intermediate school choirs from all over Westland and Canterbury in the Town Hall Term 4. St Margaret’s Year 5-7 girls’ performance date is November 4th.

The Big Sing Cadenza
We are thrilled to announce that our combined choir with Christ’s College, Collegium, has been selected to take part in this inaugural choral festival organised by The Big Sing Choral Federation. The Cadenza festival will take place in Timaru August 16-17.

Chamber Music Contest
We congratulate our three Chamber Music groups for their first-class recitals at The Piano for the annual secondary schools’ Chamber Music Contest. The girls performed to a very high standard and we would like to thank their directors Jennie Goldstein, Roanna Funcke and Chris Lynch along with Music teachers Sarah Hickford and Amanda Woods for all their support.

Encore: Choral Festival for Year 7-10
This new venture, organised by Christchurch Independent Schools to encourage singing amongst Middle School students, was a great success, and our girls enjoyed the morning workshop and rehearsals at Christ’s College before performing that evening for the community. Special mention goes to Molly Backhouse for her beautiful solo, as well as Anita Avia and Tessa Sitjes for their articulate introduction. We thank choir Director Sarena Harrison for her work with this boutique choir (missing many due to illness) and Music teacher Rachel Wilford for her support of the event. A warm crowd gave generously, raising nearly $600 towards Cholmondeley Children’s Centre with their koha. 

Grimm Tales
We encourage you to get your tickets now if you haven’t already! You don’t want to miss this senior production showcasing first-class talent from our Year 11-13 girls, directed by Elayne Buckler. Be warned, there are dark elements to these versions of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rumplestiltskin and other tales, so apt for children of eight years and over. Shows July 1-3 in the Charles Luney Auditorium and tickets are available through Eventfinda.

Art Exhibition: Maggie Cui
My name is Maggie, I’m a Year 12 from SMC. Currently, I have a batch of oil paintings on hand which I have done in the past years, that I am hoping to sell before the end of this term when I will be leaving the country. These have been displayed in the SMC library for a while now, and I will be having two open exhibitions after school when parents, friends and families are welcomed to come in and have a look around.

The dates will be: from 3:30pm to 4:30pm on Friday the 28th of June, and from 3:30pm to 5pm on Tuesday the 2nd of July at the SMC library. I really hope that you like them :)
Below are photos of some of the paintings.

House Day
Much fun was had at our annual House Day celebrated June 6th. Activities celebrating the arts included the very popular Wearable Arts costume design, the short movie competition and grid portrait creation, this year with collage. House plays set the scene beautifully for the afternoon, and we thank Dinie and Wim Bevers for their judging skills, as well as all the staff and Arts Council students who supported these events. Congratulations to Matipo for winning the plays, Konini & Manuka Wearable Arts and Rata for Grid portrait.

Black Grace Dance: Annālida Jaeger & Brianna Odering
A few weeks ago on the 27th of May, we both had the privilege of seeing Black Grace perform at the YMCA. Black Grace is a company of strong Polynesian and Maori dancers who are ambassadors of New Zealand contemporary dance, adored by critics. We went along to the performance night with other Arts teachers and Hannah Ward from our Year 13 dance class. At the moment we are exploring choreographing our own dance for the 3.1 assessment so seeing Black Grace perform was extremely insightful. Some of the highlights from the show was seeing the impressive jumps and leaps, some of the comedic moments and the strength of the dancers shown throughout the whole show. We also had the opportunity to have a Q&A with the dancers where we got to ask lots of questions about the choreographic process and the dancers themselves. It was an hour-long non-stop piece of fun and entertainment!

Arts Mentoring
The Arts Council team continue this term with their Arts Mentoring programme where Year 12 and 13 girls guide Middle School girls interested in learning something new or improving their skills in any arts area. The aim of this programme is for our Year 7-10 girls to make connections with girls involved in the arts in the senior school and for them to provide support, advice or even work towards a project (i.e. a performance, an artwork etc.) This is a really great experience for our girls as part of our Tuakana-Teina (big sister-little sister) philosophy. At the moment the Council need mainly mentors for Music/Singing, Drama, Dance and Visual Art and those who have skills in more than one area are gold. Also open to staff!

If you are interested in being a mentor, please send Kaitlin Burden an email with:
- Your name and year group
- What area(s) of the arts you would like to mentor
- Why you want to be a mentor/why you think you would be a good mentor.
If you are in Year 7-10 and would like to find a mentor, you will need to fill out this survey to be paired up: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PBSJWLF