Arts Day a Seussical success

On Friday 31 July 2020 the Arts Faculty facilitated our annual Arts Day house competition! The theme for this years Arts Day was Dr Seuss. This theme was chosen as a way of celebrating and honouring the mahi involved in the 2020 production, “Seussical”, which we had to cancel due to Covid-19.

Kicking-off Arts Day, the cast of Seussical performed a segment of the production with great enthusiasm, flair and talent. Shortly after this, the school dispersed to the 10 different activities making up the day.

This years largest activity, “Whoville Houses”, saw large groups of students working in their houses to construct their very own Whoville inspired cities out of cardboard. Each house had their own creative take on this challenge which was an incredible joy to witness.

There were three performance-based activities: the 'Dance off' activity saw groups from all seven houses choreograph a short dance routine to a soundtrack that had been pre-DJ’d for them by Mr Carpenter's Year 10 music students; a song writing competition saw groups working with literary experts, Mr Summerfield and Mr Groom, to develop original words to a beat; and a 3-minute Shakespeare competition saw students working with Mr Rawson to construct a short dramatic scene based around a famous Shakespeare play featuring a Dr Seuss twist.

There were four visual-arts based activities: “Power-Banners”, which saw students communicating a current political issue through the medium of paint, and the power of words, effective imagery and Dr Seuss quotes; a steampunk themed Wearable Arts activity saw students working with cardboard, black, gold and silver paint, to create mechanical-inspired outfits; “Face-Off” (which echos the reality TV show) saw students using make-up and face-paint to transform a model into something or someone else; and a pavement art competition saw groups working with chalk-pastels to draw a portrait of a member from our SPC community.

Two lens-based competitions were also key highlights from the day. A number of students worked closely with Mr Howard to produce short films in the style of popular social media platform, Tick-Tok. The work produced from this activity was incredible – creative, fun, witty and clever. The other activity on-the-go was a photography challenge which saw students working and operating as documentary photographers, tasked with the mission of capturing the creativity of the day.

Lastly, but certainly not least, we also had running the annual solo and group House Music competitions. Students involved in these activities showed incredible talent and these last events from House Music complemented Arts Day 2020 extremely well.

Whilst everyone was a winner on Arts Day, there were points associated with each activity; our student teachers, Melody Schnauer, Kate Mora, Morgan Buchanan and Emma Gray, our marketing team and Mr Howard, Mr Ward and Mr Bell, all had the tricky job of judging the various activities. Placings for each of the 10 activities have been shared with students via the Housemasters, however, the overall placings for the entire day played out as follows: 1st = Fitchett, 2nd = Hamilton, 3rd = Hall, 4th = Clark, 5th = Sargood, 6th = Williams and 7th = School.

In summary, Arts Day 2020 was an amazing day! A huge thank must go to Mr Cameron (our new LOC of Arts) who led the organisation of the day; the wider Arts Faculty, Mr Carpenter, Mr Rawson, Ms Old and Ms Ringle, who all put in so much talent and creative energy; our incredible Arts Prefects, Veronica Bagley and Gustav Jooste, who both MC’d the day with passion and infectious energy; the wider St Paul's staff, who were incredibly hands-on and supportive of the day; and ALL St Paul's students … the Arts Faculty were overwhelmed by the level of engagement, enthusiasm, creativity and vulnerability that was displayed by students. Creativity is an integral and highly diverse quality everyone needs to embrace in some way, shape or form, in order to be successful in life, and Arts Day was a genuine example that our St Paul's community is made up of creative and adaptive individuals.

We can’t wait to bring you Arts Day 2021!