Norwood Visit

The school entertained two visitors recently from Norwood school. Emma Thurstan, head of the faculty of Visual Art and Design and Ali Cowley from the art department. The faculty encompasses both Art and Technology and Emma and Ali wanted to gain a better idea of how things work at the BRIT school in the Technical Theatre Arts and Technology departments. They were keen to visit and look into ways of further improving their technology offer with particular reference to set and costume design.After a tour of the departments and talks with some of our students they enjoyed a performance of one of the Common Ground plays from the Theatre department in the Obie theatre. We now hope to discuss ideas for some collaborative work and also to develop stronger links between our departments at the the BRIT and Norwood.
And a word from Emma......... "We were both very inspired and both enjoyed talking to the set production students who we found to be so committed, enthusiastic and passionate about their course. Please can you pass on our thanks to the students. The performance was also really enjoyable to watch".

Fruity Festivities on BRIT FM

This Christmas was heralded in to the sound of the Pineapple club back on the airwaves on BRIT FM. This is part of an ongoing project initiated by media Leading Edge manager Jon Preston. Senior citizen's from the Pineapple club teamed up with students from another ongoing Leading Edge radio project from Saint Joseph's school in Beulah Hill to give us the Family Christmas show. Saint Joseph's is an all boys catholic school and the students that have been coming into the BRIT school to work on the project are all SENCO recommendations. The senior citizens from the Pineapple project are all from the local Afro Caribbean community and they were able to team up with the St Joseph's students to pass on the skills they have picked up running previous Pineapple club shows. It is a sign of the impact of the project that not only have St Joseph's remarked on the behavioural improvement of these students but they have now embarked on a similar project of their own involving some of their local senior citizens.

Visitors from the Oasis

Two members from the Oasis Academy in Bristol were visiting the BRIT school this week. They are looking to expand their delivery of performing arts through the school and wanted to have a look at the work and courses that the BRIT school runs. Our visitors spent quite a bit of their visit in the Technical Theatre/technology area of the school because they wanted to see how we integrate technology as a BTEC unit into all our KS4 performing arts strands. Leading Edge team member and head of Technology Chris Lewington was on hand to show them the department and some of the stage design work underway for the theatre departments common ground season.

New Expressions at Oak Lodge

Leading Edge dance and musical theatre specialist Lorraine Woodley has been working with Oak Lodge, a School for deaf students between the ages of 11 and 19. Lorraine says she first got in touch with them when she was asked to manage the BRIT school's Festival Week for Musical Theatre in 2008 and decided she would like the opening song to be ‘signed’.
Lorraine has been working with Oak Lodge teaching them choreography and technique. Lorraine says
" I thought that basic Laban notation symbols would be a good way to interact so I used that to help them learn a few basic skills, particularly how to communicate emotion through travel, signing and symbols".
At Oak Lodge the students have previously only copied people and this method allowed them to express themselves. " I wanted Oak Lodge to understand how important it is to have Dance education because physical expression is important in helping students develop their confidence and self esteem."

Strawberry Pickings Forever

Thursday 16th July saw the culmination of a Leading Edge project in which our year 12 theatre students performed a selection of plays written by year 10 students from Saint Mark's Academy in Merton. The project was initiated by Leading Edge theatre manager Simon Stephens who has worked with the students at St Mark's to help write the plays. The performances to the public took place at the Croydon Warehouse theatre as part of the BRIT theatre departments Strawberry Picking week long residency where plays written and performed by our students are performed. There were four plays from St Mark's students on offer looking at issues such as smoking and bullying. The St Mark's students clearly enjoyed the experience of working with our own students to realise the performance of their plays. Here's an email from Gabi Thomas the St Marks student who wrote Checkerboard, one of the plays performed

"Thank you for picking my script and bringing it to life from page to stage, the actors/actresses where amazing and i still cant believe that mine was picked! It has really inspired me to future to be on stage when im older! Thank you again everyone who directed and performed, i had a really good day
Again Thank You Gabi Thomas"

The plays performed were

BIN FILLING by Florence Stanton
NO SMOKING by Tyler South
CHECKERBOARD by Gabi Thomas
PURSUIT OF DREAMS by Anneka Williams

AWAY WITH THE FAIRIES

The BRIT school entertained children from two of our local schools this week to see our year 10 dance/ technology show "Fazana and the Fairy Garden". Nursery children from Selhurst Early Years centre and Reception children from Broadmead primary school came to see the show that tells the story of a little girl who likes to play with her fairy friends at the bottom of the garden and also dance with her creepy crawly insect friends. The show was a cross curricular project between technology whose year 10 students created the set and costumes and year 10 dance strand students who performed. The nursery children got to have a dance as well at the end and pretend they were a frog and a spider under the guidance of our dance students. As well as entertaining our nearest and smallest neighbours the project also aims to engender the seeds of possibilities in the performing arts at an early age.

JAMMING AT THE PINEAPPLE CLUB

The Pineapple club is a radio project run by Leading Edge radio manager Jon Preston that invites senior members of the local West Indian community to come in and create their own radio show. Following on from their success last year the members of the Pineapple West Indian Luncheon club in Anerly have been in September and Christmas time and now this summer term to lay down their own mix of smooth Caribbean rhythms and interviews. Pineapple members work with some of the BRIT students to create the radio show from both in front and behind the microphone.