Arts Day 2023 - Around The World

This year's theme for Arts Day was 'Around the World' which provided houses the opportunity to explore the competition in a wide variety of directions. 'Around the World' could be about showing where people in the house are from or where people would like to go one day. It could be about connecting everyone from all around the world and bringing them together to create something. It could be about exploring different cultures and getting out of the comfort zone to see the world from a different perspective.

Of key importance, the students from each house took time to think about this theme and have conversations about what it could mean for them as a community; as a result, each house had a range of wonderful creative responses from political messages to quite scientific explorations.

The day was filled with a variety of inspiring and creatively challenging events: Dance, Words to Music, Face-off, Power Banners, Poi Making and Performance, Pavement Art, Short Film, Three-Minute Drama, Animal Sculptures, Drawing Concertina, Cake-Off, Portrait Art, World Union (a debating event) and Yarn/Origami Installations.

This year we had two guest judges looking at a range of entries. Artist Sean Crawford and his partner Jayne Green flew up from the Wairarapa to visit us and to see students’ amazing work. Sean is a renowned contemporary sculptor and he is currently working with Head Prefects, Matthew Chanwai and Lucy O'Meeghan, to develop this year's leavers' gift. Sean and Jayne were simply blown away by the enthusiasm, thoughtfulness and care that went into many of the creative outcomes they saw.

Whilst all houses found success in different activities, Fitchett House took the win again, followed closely by School in 2nd place and Sargood in 3rd place. Clark and Hall placed 4th-equal, leaving Williams in 6th place and Hamilton in 7th place.