Central Foundation Boys’ School Newsletter

TfL unveils Central Foundation art project at Old Street Station

At the end of June, Year 9 Central Foundation artists attend-ed the unveiling of their artwork which will be on display indef-initely at Old Street Station. It is the reward for a year’s worth of work that have linked a number of projects co-ordinated by Mr Coyle, Head of Art before involving Transport for London.

As part of an initiative to encourage pupils to be proactive seek-ing out free art available to them in London, Mr Coyle began a project last October. The project was based around Mark Wall-inger’s Labyrinth, a series of 270 different labyrinth design prints, each one unique to the London Underground stations where it is displayed. As part of the project, Mr Coyle encouraged both pupils and staff to take a selfie every time they passed a laby-rinth print and accumulated all the images into a giant piece.

After the boys had finished their project, Mr Coyle sent it to Transport for London. They were so impressed that they contacted the school and began a new project altogether. They put the school in touch

with artist Holly Graham who visited for a series of after-school workshops focussing on the theme of travel. After experimenting with different ways of representing movement and travel in a visual form, each pupil made a wall-tile of their own design out of clay to represent what travel and the London Underground meant to them.

July 2016

After the pupils had completed their tiles, Gra-ham turned them into prints and put them in a labyrin-thine arrangement to create the image of travelling in one continuous mo-tion. TfL have now mounted the prints on the tiles in-side Old Street Station where they will now be on display for the thousands of people who use the station every day.

2nd September - INSET Day (Staff only)5th September - Year 7 Induction Day (new Year 7 only)6th September - Autumn term begins (Whole school; 8:55am - 3:15pm)24th - 28th Oct - Half term16th December - Autumn term ends

Whipsnade ZooYear 7 travelled to Bedfordshire with the Science Department in July to visit Whipsnade Zoo. In recent lessons, the Year 7s have been studying nature and the vis-it to the zoo brought to life examples of how animals have evolved their physical and behavioural features to help them thrive in their habitat. They also looked at the rela-tionships in ecosystems and how organisms depend upon each other for survival, such as through food webs.The zoo is home to many exotic animals and it was the first time for many of the Year 7s that they had seen such animals as tigers, rhinos and flamingos.

Spanish TripAt the end of June, a group of pupils from Years 8 - 10 visited the Cantabria region of Spain for a week. While there, they immersed themselves in the language with daily lan-guage lessons by locals. They also gained first hand experience of Spanish culture and life-style by travelling to different towns such as Puesto Viesgo, Santillana del Mar, Ontanedo and Santander. Alongside Spanish lessons, they participated in outdoor activities which included learning prehistoric hunting techniques used in the Puente Viesgo region [left]tas well as touring the caves there. The visit to Santander saw the boys go shopping in or-der to encourage them to use full conversational Spanish with the locals and capitalise on their daily lessons. The pupils flew home on Friday afternoon more proficient in Spanish.

French TripDuring June, 12 pupils from Years 8-10 sailed to France to improve their French language skills and cultural knowledge. The group left the school at 6am on Monday morning, sail-ing from Folkestone over the English Channel to Calais. After reaching the mainland, they stopped in Rouen [left] to tour the town and take a rest before completing their journey to Mesnières-en-Bray. The boys received multiple daily French lessons. They also spent their time there learning how to bake bread as well as touring a cheese factory and the Impression-ist Museum of Giverny. On their final day they were taken to the Dieppe food market to buy ingredients for lunch, having to fully exercise the French they had been learning all week.

Central Futures WeekAfter sitting their exams, Year 12 began the transition to their final year at Central Foundation with Central Futures Week. The week long series of activities, curated by the Central Futures team, saw them welcome back a number of pupils who left last year to hear first hand about recent experiences of leaving for higher education. They also took part in a carousel pro-gramme where small groups spent 20 minutes hearing from six guest speakers on different post-school options. The week closed with Slaughter & May tutors giving one-to-one advice and feedback [left] on personal statements written for university and careers applications.

Autumn term 2016 dates

Trip to Switzerland to CERN InstituteSixth Form physicists travelled to Geneva, Switzerland to visit the CERN insti-tute and the United Nations in July. Their tour of the United Nations included visit-ing the Conference for Disarmament, a forum where 65 member nations discuss and debate multilateral arms control and disarmament agreements. The main purpose of their journey was to visit CERN, the pan-European research laboratory that fo-cusses on particle physics and houses the Large Hadron Collider. Along with the LHC, they also saw the computer on which Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer’s operation centre, communicat-ing with the International Space Station to measure cosmic rays and dark matter.

Performance EveningsWith the end of the school year fast approaching, the music, art, resistant materials, graphics and dra-ma departments presented the best work that pu-pils have created throughout the year during our two annual events.

Summer Music Concert

In the final week of June, Music School staged their annual Summer Concert. It showcased the hard work and commitment the pupils dis-play throughout the year during their rehears-als which take place an hour before school starts.

The concert featured a varied programme of mu-sic, opening with the string group playing Bartók’s Echoes. Later in the night four members of the string group returned for another instrumen-tal number – Hungarian Dances by Brahms.

drama as a GCSE option for the next two years and is designed to give them early experience in writ-ing theatre and performing in front of an audience.

The GCSE artwork was the pupils’ personal re-sponse to the theme of past, present and future which is a timely one given the school’s impend-ing 150th anniversary. The pupils were encouraged to interpret the theme in any media, style or scale.

Four groups performed plays based on the art-work while four boys were inspired to pres-ent individual monologues. The eight per-formances were interlinked with a satirical performance by two pupils acting as conceited art critics, questioning the evening’s guests on their thoughts about the various art on display.

“It showcased the hard work and commitment the pupils display throughout the year.”

Other instrumental numbers included the FretWrxToo guitar group’s take on the traditional Sakura, Tito Pu-ente’s Oye Como Va as well as the full concert band performing the pop songs Twist & Shout and Bad Romance.

However, the majority of performances did feature vocals. This included Joydeep Shil singing Justin Bieber’s Love Your-self, the main FretWrx guitar group playing and singing Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl and the Chamber Choir’s a ca-pella take on The Zutons’ Valerie, as made famous by Amy Winehouse. Another modern pop song made an appearance in

a sixth-form exclusive performance as the Sixth Form Band welcomed the summer with Corinne Bailey-Rae’s Put Your Records On.

Throughout the evening, tributes were paid to two music icons who passed away earlier at the beginning of the year: Prince and David Bowie. Early in the evening the concert band performed Prince’s Raspberry Beret and lat-er the experimental Dance Electric, which was written by Prince but performed by André Cymone. The evening closed with Let’s Dance, with the Concert Band providing music and backing vocals and lead vocals performed by David Bowie himself.

An Evening of Visual and Performing Arts

During the last week of term, a number of departments came together to stage a collaboration evening of arts. The art, resistant materials and graphics departments decided to combine their exhibition with the drama department, which led to the idea of using the artwork on display as inspiration for the devised Year 9 drama pieces. As with previous years, the drama plays are performed by Year 9s who have chosen