This weekend, Leckford Place School will metamorphose into an art gallery containing an exciting, diverse array of work by Sixth Form and Leckford Place students, as well as parents, staff and local artists.
We'll also be showing the winning entries to our Primary School Art Competition.
Having already seen some of the work that'll be on show, we're eagerly anticipating a superb exhibition. And we'd be delighted if you'd come along. The show will be open from 10am to 4pm on Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 May – and entry is, of course, free to all. See location on Google Maps.
On Saturday, Summertown in North Oxford was alive with colour and sound – thanks to the street festival organised as part of Artweeks.
The joint d'Overbroeck's Sixth Form and Leckford Place School stand offered younger children the opportunity to contribute to a giant collaborative piece of art:
... Whilst Sixth Former Steve Litherland entertained onlookers with an impressive display of juggling.
Musical accompaniment, meanwhile, was provided by Evie Oswald, Sarah Pearson and Kathryn Poon.
Many thanks to the students and staff who gave up their time to help make the street festival such a great success – and to those friends of the College who came along to visit our stall.
Year 9 pupils at Leckford Place have been hard at work painting canvases for display at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
Drawing inspiration from Action painting, the Colourists and the American Expressionists – principally, artists such as Joan Miro, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Basquiat – each student has created a piece. Photographed reproductions of the finished work will soon be on permanent display at the John Radcliffe Hospital, in conjunction with the Occupational Health Unit.
The students have had the chance to experiment with various media – ink, paint, tissue paper collage, pastels and chalks – and with creating different moods within their work. In the knowledge that the canvases would be exhibited together, the students felt that their work should share common themes and use similar colouring. The finished canvases bear out this approach.
Oxfordshire's largest visual arts festival, Artweeks consists of around 400 stunning exhibitions. We’re delighted once again to be main sponsors of the festival.
For three weeks each year, Oxfordshire's artists and craftspeople throw open their homes and studios, and a vast array of work in every style and medium imaginable is put on show.
Artweeks enables us to catch a glimpse of the creative process itself: to smell the fresh paint and the drying clay; and to meet the artists in their own space, surrounded by their tools and materials, and often also by their own favourite sources of inspiration.
Preparations are well underway for summer's festival. As well as being main sponsors, we are also hosting our own show, which will feature work by current students, parents and staff alike. As with all Artweeks shows, entry will be free to all.
Our exhibition will be at Leckford Place School on 16-17 May – and we'd love you to come along. Entry is free to all, and the exhibition will be open 10am to 4pm. Please telephone us (01865 302620) for details.
Last term's performance of 1920s farce Not in Front of the Waiter – featuring students from both Leckford Place and d'Overbroeck's Sixth Form – was a great success. The following writeup appears in the Oxford Times Education Directory 2009, with this week's paper.
Students from Leckford Place School and d'Overbroeck's Sixth Form took a different approach to their winter production with the comedy operetta and tribute to Offenbach, ‘Not in Front of the Waiter.’ The audience were as much part of the production as the players and singers, as the vaulted school hall was transformed into a 1920’s cabaret club for the evening. Friends, family and guests, most of whom were elegantly attired in period dress, settled themselves at candlelit tables as the action took place around them.
This lavish production was served up in a series of delicious courses of songs of the era and the main performance. For Hors d’Oeuvres, the pearl-like voices of Pankaew Saksornchai and Chanita Seedaket got the audience’s attention as they sang about Gershwin’s treacherous ‘Lorelei,’ a provocative performance, enhanced by the young singers’ abundance of feathers and fans.
For Entrée the truly scrumptious Olivia Fraser-Smith melted hearts with her husky rendition of Iving Berlin’s classic, ‘What’ll I do?’ Even compere Will Cronk struggled to keep a dry eye as he presented, for Viandes, the marvellous Ben Pugsley, Captain of d’Overbroeck’s rugby first XV, who gave a faultless performance of Denza’s ‘Funiculi Funicula.’ Dessert drew the musical prelude to a close with the opulent Fleur Rampton, who carried the audience away on her ‘Stairway to Paradise.’
A break for dinner followed as guests were lavishly served by waitresses Louisa Goodfellow and Eva Rorsman, and then onto the Plat du Jour, ‘Not in Front of the Waiter’ ….
This comedy operetta was first performed in the 1960’s as a tribute to Jacques Offenbach. The Leckford Place School players, with the help of a large aspidistra, brought it to life fabulously. The story starts with waiter Block (Will Cronk) preparing to receive his guests in the private room of a Paris restaurant. Solange (Zanni Cohen) and Prosper (Matt Thorns) enter and take a table next to an enormous aspidistra. The audience learns that they are both married, though not to each other, and out to enjoy a clandestine meeting. Moments later, Hortense (Rosie Cohen) and Aristide (Gidon Fineman) arrive at an adjoining table. They are bent on a similar amorous escapade and are indeed the wife and husband of the first couple. It is not long before all is discovered; the young ladies humorously exaggerating astonishment then indignity and a quarrel ensues. The waiter intervenes to reveal that from a strawberry mark on the ladies' shoulders, he recognises them as the daughters he shamelessly abandoned in childhood. The four listen with incredulity, then the ladies rejoice in having each found a father, a sister and also a brother-in-law. Reconciliation abounds, and all join in a song in praise of family trees.
The five players gave their all with a performance that is worthy of any professional stage. Zanni and her Sixth-Form sister Rosie Cohen, whilst their casting of siblings in the play was fortuitous, are clearly very talented young ladies. They carried their roles with precision comic timing, faultless singing and the wild emotions that drew the appropriate gasps of awe and shock from the audience. Their respective partners brilliantly played roles above their years; Matt Thorns convincingly projecting his ulterior motive with the delectable Solange, becoming the confused husband in the face of too much information to take in at once. Sixth-Former Gidon Fineman was icily cool as the highbrow Aristide, clearly a man who just wanted a quiet life, and proved himself as an actor who could effortlessly handle slapstick along with the smooth. It is worthy of note that Gidon was the recent winner of Oxfordshire County Council's first ever Young Composer competition.
These four wonderful performances were brought together with great aplomb by Will Cronk with his hilarious rendition of Block the waiter, demonstrating his talent as a comic performer with a natural instinct for timing and delivery. Very polished, he won the audience’s sympathy as the luckless Block, a man who has paid royally for his misdemeanours, only to be rewarded by this coincidental reunion.
Alongside the excellent teaching, support and coaching she provides to d'Overbroeck's students, Jo also works as a volunteer at Summertown Stars AFC, the largest youth football club in Oxfordshire. There, she not only manages and coaches the girls' under 12 team, but has also set up a visually impaired football team.
'This season, Jo's Summertown team are in the under 14 league. The players play for fun and the team spirit and friendship they have is amazing. They lose more matches than they win, but the players turn up every week as keen as mustard to play. At Christmas they all donned Santa outfits and ran around Oxford as a team, raising nearly £300 for Helen and Douglas House.'
'Jo has helped girls' football grow at the club, and Summertown now has over 50 girls playing regular football. Jo is a likable individual, an excellent coach, and she would be a worth winner.'
– Paul Chamberlain, Summertown Stars AFC
Congratulations to Jo on her richly deserved nomination.
Yesterday, Year 10 GCSE Drama students visited Chesterton Church of England Primary School's reception class. They performed a masked piece they had devised, based on overcoming fears about starting school and different ways to make friends.
The students then worked with the younger children, helping them make their own masks to illustrate a variety of feelings.
The visit was a great success: the children were engaged and excited throughout – and the Year 10 students learned a great deal too!
by Emmie van Biervliet
by Paul Amey
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