Grammar Gazette- Issue 1, 2015

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140 YEARS OF THE ARTS

IF THERE IS A THREAD RUNNING THROUGH THE HISTORY OF THE ARTS AT BRISBANE GIRLS GRAMMAR SCHOOL, IT IS AUTHENTICITY. WHILE MOTIVATIONS FOR INCLUDING THE ARTS IN OUR CONTEMPORARY CURRICULUM MAY DIFFER OR HAVE EXPANDED FROM THOSE OF THE EARLY DAYS OF THIS SCHOOL, THE ARTS HAVE NEVERTHELESS BEEN CONSTANTLY DEEMED OF VALUE FOR OUR STUDENTS, NOT MERELY AS PART OF THE ACADEMIC FRAMEWORK BUT AS A LEARNING STRUCTURE FOR LIFE AND LIVING.

Real life experiences in the arts classrooms have grown exponentially across the years, realised now through an enormous diversity and flexibility of learning. Art students no longer simply sit at a desk carefully copying the same picture displayed at the front of the class. Students in Year 8 may all be learning to draw from nature, learning skills from teacher modelling, but each student is pursuing her own version of ideas. By the time art students are in the senior school, they are able to choose their own preferred media for a personal expression of a syllabus theme and the carefully honed skills of the junior school take form in an explosion of styles and creation of meaning. Visiting artists in workshops and in the classroom contribute further to the wealth of the Visual Art curriculum. Exposure to the world of theatre is an integral part of both Curriculum and Co-curricular Drama. Over the years, students have worked with highly regarded playwrights, directors and actors who have provided their practitioner perspective, allowing students to engage with artists in the process of creative theatre building. Students gain both a deeper understanding of the actor’s approach to character development and also the director’s tools in shaping dramatic action. Noa Rotem, a physical theatre specialist, performer and teacher, works alongside Drama staff each February as they lead our students in the craft of building original physical theatre compositions. Most recently, Michael Futcher, Brisbane-based playwright and director has worked with the 2015 Senior Drama Company in their

AUTHOR Ms Lorraine Thornquist Director of Creative Arts

The arts classrooms have continuously been peopled by practising artists, experts in their fields who have brought the world into the student learning sphere. Students have always been transported beyond the classroom in their lessons of art, music and drama and the walls of the arts classrooms continue to be flexible, allowing the world to come to the students so they can imagine and live their arts. Essential to this intent is that the expertise of the teaching personnel in the arts is corroborated and enhanced by visiting artists. Founding art teachers included no lesser names than R. Godfrey Rivers and J.A. Clarke, artists of renown whose works hang in state and national galleries. The first music teacher, R.T. Jeffries, was a professional musician and has given his name to a perpetual bursary. In the first part of the twentieth century, drama education and the local world of theatre was put on the map by Rhoda Felgate (1918), a student of the school who returned as a teacher of ‘elocution’ and established the highly influential and significant amateur theatre companies of Twelfth Night and Repertory Theatre in Brisbane.

GRAMMAR GAZETTE