Our Art Students at the Maisha Arts Festival

As previously featured in our News, Mr Parnham, our Art teacher, had the pleasure of taking a number of our art students to the Maisha Arts festival organised by the Alliance Française. A number of the Yr7 girls and one of our Yr9 students travelled to the Alliance with the masks and sculptures they had been working on over the last few weeks in the flexible learning class. The Alliance has recently opened up a new reading room with a freshly painted mural created by one of the visiting international artists to the festival. The girls’ work will decorate and complement the room for the next few weeks so if you are able to visit the centre, please drop in and take a look at their hard work.

Once the exhibition was installed, they joined the other revellers which included the visiting artists, musicians, acrobats and other circus performers and gathered a growing crowd as they made our way in the heat to the clock tower. Other school groups joined and the local police assisted on the route as the parade literally stopped traffic. The parade culminated outside Via Via, where the dance groups and circus performers put on a show to the delight of all until the end of the afternoon whereupon our students wearily returned to school.

We would like to thank the hard work of the girls without whose dedication there would have been no exhibition, Olivia Morel, director of the Alliance Française for inviting us for what I hope will be the first of many collaborations and to Allison Wallace for making the introductions between us and getting the whole project started.