Phoenix Primary and Secondary School

Phoenix Arts Festival, 3rd -14th February 2014.

 

This year’s Arts Festival took place from 3rd February – 14th February 2013.

The festival celebrated the school’s approach to creative learning and supporting the curriculum through the Expressive Arts.

Parents and friends of Phoenix and schools from around the borough were invited to participate in a range of arts activities organised by our pupils and staff. The main focus was to raise awareness about young people with autism and to create positive images of their talents and skills. The festival also supported our Rights Respecting Schools initiative which is aimed at helping pupils to understand their Human Rights.

 

 

 

With the theme of “The Seasons” activities in the festival ranged from arts and crafts workshops, jazz clubs, treasure trails, animation, horticulture, architecture, poetry, sensory stories, music, art, dance and drama. There were multi- sensory installations with all pupils in the school role playing in theatrical sets of gardens through the seasons. In addition some pupils from Key Stage 2 and all pupils from Key Stages 3, 4 and 5 worked to create a play in a day and performed their work to parents and guests of the school. Animations created by our pupils are also on our website.

Another highlight of the festival was a production of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ by William Shakespeare put on by the pupils’ very own theatre company called “Break A Leg Theatre Company”. In their version of this play Shylock is autistic instead of Jewish. They have adapted the play to raise autism awareness and rehearsals of this adaptation have been used to explore issues of racism and prejudice as well as attitudes towards disability.

The play was first performed at The Shakespeare Schools Festival and our pupils received extremely positive responses form the festival:

"a stunning performance, absolutely outstanding…an extremely compelling and powerful piece of theatre that had a strong impact on the audience”

The Phoenix Arts Festival was created and managed by the senior pupils in the school who are acting as “Festival Hosts” and running the festival as part of their Silver Arts Award for other Phoenix pupils and pupils from other local schools in Tower Hamlets.

The festival ended with an exhibition created by every pupil in the school entitled “The Forest”. As part of the school’s work for the Rights Respecting Schools Award, pupils created trees for the forest to represent their human rights. The festival was reported in an article in Eastend Life and was enjoyed by pupils, staff and parents and we are extremely proud of all our pupils’ hard work and achievements!