This week BCS was delighted to support KEHS with their national arts event for schools across the country. Tuneup Tuesday was created to highlight the impact of the arts in the development and mental health of young people and to encourage young people to consider a career in the arts.
The project involved over 130 industry professionals in all sectors of the arts, such as music, drama, dance, art and design and poetry. These included the likes of Dame Darcey Bussell, comedian and actor Greg Davies, British photographer Rankin, Leader and Artistic Director of English Sinfonia Janice Graham and BBC young musician Sheku Kanneh-Mason.
In total 112,064 children aged 4 to 18 took part, including children based overseas. At BCS we made the most of this groundbreaking project and enjoyed a huge variety of activities ranging from poetry writing to mime and drama games, designing circus make-up, understanding sound design, making a mini book and zine, improvisation, rhyme, singing, signing and much more!
1B had a great deal of fun taking part in an energetic warm up with Adele Waites and then showed a range of emotions using facial expressions, hand and body gestures. They also used pitch, pace and tone really well to show emotion using their voices. 5SW also enjoyed this workshop and especially a drama challenge where they acted out scenes only using the words ‘gobbledegook’. The rest of the class had to guess what they were acting just from their body language, facial expressions and change in voice.
Mr Hill’s computing class used the Understanding Sound Design video with Tom Marshall. The School Leaders used Logic Pro X to listen back to their edited Podcast show, suggesting a couple of tweaks, re-recording a couple of sections that weren’t quite up to standard, and to agree the genre of music to be used. They had great fun deciding where to put the ‘stings’. (These are short audio clips used to punctuate the various sections of the Podcast.)
4ET created mini books with Ben Sadler. They decided to make them on a variety of subjects and personalise them. The result was a wide variety of topics, from cats to the wives of Henry VIII! The children put them all together to make their own (mini) library.
1V also followed Ben’s instructions to make their own mini book. They had to listen very carefully in order to fold their paper landscape or portrait and to understand where to make their paper cuts. The children were all very excited once they had finally made their mini books and these were turned into a variety of titles, including The Monster that saved Christmas, Cats and Kittens at Christmas, Dinosaurs, All about goats, Big Cats and Aeroplanes in battle.
Many classes were involved in the Wake Up dance routine with Louise Lenihan. The children started by sitting at their desks and then carefully followed a dance routine performed by the teacher along to the song ‘Can’t Stop The Feeling’ by Justin Timberlake. The dance was fun and exciting, and all of the children enjoyed the fast movements. By the end there was plenty of freestyle dancing happening!
As well as shaking some moves, 4LJ got creative with two former BCS pupils. The class learnt how to write poetry with Scarlett Brunning and Jasmine Gardosi. Meanwhile Mr Nicklin’s classes were exploring rhythm with percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie. Her task to learn to clap and tap 3 beats against 2 proved to be more difficult than we first thought! Having this illustrious house-hold name (to many) teach the children a new and exacting musical skill in a fun and dynamic way was great! Please ask your children to show you if they took part in this fantastic workshop.
By taking part in Tuneup Tuesday we were reminded of how vital the arts are to our well-being. We were proud to see many of our former BCS pupils who are now studying at King Edward’s High School helping to organise the day and deliver workshops.
Mrs Dredger
