Those who were not on Expeditions Week attended a range of in-house sessions including a two-parter on ‘Arts, Culture & Creativity’ which had the aim of broadening the girls’ cultural horizons, and offering an opportunity for them to encounter aspects of the arts that they may not yet be familiar with. In the first of these sessions, we considered the benefits of participation in the arts and of cultural education, followed by looking at a short history of ballet, watching and discussing excerpts from both traditional and modern ballets, and finally a short history of music. In the second session, we covered a short history of art, and looked at what is involved in curating an exhibition, before the girls had a go at curating their own exhibition. They had to devise a theme, identify which works of art they wanted to include and so which museums and galleries they would need to be ‘borrowed’ from. They also had to consider where these works would go on their virtual wall, establish a target audience, and think about marketing and pricing.
The winning team of Julie Dehmel, Caroline Dehmel and Sophia Hydari curated an exhibition called ‘Orange’ which took in works by Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Contemporary artists, while second prize went to Margot Grigoryants, Ava Stolkin, Elisabeth Duroc-Danner and Gazel Aksoy whose exhibition entitled ‘The Night Sky’ thought carefully about colour and contrast.
Miss Boon, Head of History