Arts Festival sparks creativity across Wellington College China
Wellington College China successfully concluded its first-ever group-wide Wellington Arts Festival, an enriching eight-day celebration of music, dance, drama, and the visual arts. With a firm commitment to providing a well-rounded, holistic learning experience, pupils across the entire Wellington College China group experienced a series of immersive workshops, captivating performances, and inspiring art installations.
“This festival underscores our belief at Wellington that learning about the arts is essential to a well-rounded, holistic education,” says Wellington College China Founder and Chairman Joy Qiao. “We want to inspire every Wellington and Huili pupil to ‘Be You’ and to ‘Be More’. By encouraging them to tap into their innate creative spirit, we widen their world, enabling them to discover new passions or hidden talents.”
“We also want pupils and parents to realise that the arts have as much value as traditional academic subjects,” adds Arts Festival Director Michael Larsen-Disney. “By challenging our pupils to engage with the arts, we expand their horizons, and they learn highly transferrable skills like creativity, communication and collaboration, all of which will serve them well in a vast array of careers.”
This is the first year in which all schools in the Wellington College China group have taken part in the Arts Festival. This is equally important because it encourages engagement across the entire Wellington Community. It brings together pupils, parents, and teachers from Tianjin, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Nantong to share in the joy of creation.
Amy Tham
Director of Performing Arts
WCCH
Wellington College Hangzhou took a group of talented pupils over to Wellington College International Shanghai for a weekend of fun and learning during the Elite Pods event. Pupils had a diverse experience learning about performing and creating techniques from peers across our sister schools. Memories and friendships were formed, and all our pupils benefited greatly in terms of gaining not just knowledge and skills, but also learning how to be an inclusive, independent, and inspired artist in their creative output.
This week, all our specialists prepared something special in all their respective disciplines across the whole school. Visual Arts had the theme of time embedded in their lessons and pupils explored some of the different ways that time might be used in making artworks led by our Head of Arts, Mr Leif Raiha and his art team consisting of Ms Deborah Bauman, Ms Lindsay Jenney and Ms Ayat Madbolly. They also examined and discussed time-based media and processes and created artworks viewed through the theme of time.
For drama, our lovely teachers, Ms Karlien Colff and Ms Kimberly Kim prepared a variety of improvisational games and a drama lesson taught from the pupil’s perspective which allowed the audience to experience how they use their time to finetune skills and explore characters through different stages of their lives.
For music, Mr Gary Ruston and Ms Kimberly Kim, led by our Head of Music, Mr Mon Lee also planned different lunchtime concerts with an exciting repertoire that ranged from African drumming, choral singing and individual piano and violin showcases. The audience were impressed by how talented and confident our pupils were as they clearly displayed the values of courage, teamwork, and kindness throughout the various events and performances.
I would like to thank every teacher who supported the Arts Week with enthusiasm and imparted their skills and expertise to help create this memorable experience for our Wellington College Hangzhou pupils.
“I think this opportunity is so precious. I got to meet a lot of different Wellington pupils all across China. This really enables me to improve my acting skills and also builds up my confidence. So, thank you for this opportunity. And I believe that I will work harder in the future.”
— Kitty
Pupil, WCCH
The festival kicked off on Friday 13 October when a select group of nearly 200 of Wellington College China’s best artists came to Shanghai for our ‘Elite Pods’. This was a three-day series of enriching workshops in music, drama, dance and the visual arts at our Wellington and Huili School Shanghai campuses. Our young artists and performers had a unique opportunity to learn from experienced professionals in their respective fields, showcase their talents, collaborate with their peers and develop their skills with an eye toward professional pathways.
Visual arts pupils enjoyed a visit to Shanghai’s interactive light and sound exhibition TeamLAB, which served as inspiration for a massive multi-story painting installation that spanned several large canvases. Our dancers worked together, tackling some challenging choreography in intensive rehearsals, culminating in a captivating performance of jazz dance. Drama pupils devised a promenade performance based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Our Elite Pod Orchestra learned and performed pieces by Strauss, Dvorak and Williams, whilst our choirs enjoyed singing a broad selection of contemporary, classical and folk choral works.
The opening weekend of the Arts Festival was also an opportunity to showcase the results of our first group-wide art competition. Selected entrants had their works on exhibit in the Wellington Shanghai foyer. They submitted some spectacular drawings, paintings and mixed media pieces around the theme of ‘Connections’.
Interactive opportunities
at every
Wellington College China school
By the following Monday, all Wellington and Huili pupils had a chance to get involved, with every campus across the group organising interactive school-wide opportunities for the entire week. This year’s theme was ‘time’, which opened up countless avenues for exploration and discovery.
In Shanghai, for instance, pupils could screen print their own ‘Arts Festival 2023’ tote bags, learn how to throw pottery, paint Chinese terracotta warriors or even contribute to a Dale Chihuly-inspired art installation in the College atrium. Bands, choirs, orchestras, dancers and actors were all showcased throughout each day and were joined in performance by The JZ Club musicians and singers from NYU SH. The week culminated in a flash mob performance of the song ‘Time Warp’ from The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the Promenade.
Huili Shanghai’s Primary School took the entire Monday to ‘play with time’ in an immersive day of the arts. For the rest of the week, the school’s choirs and rock bands put on impromptu lunchtime performances and jam sessions. The week ended with an open rehearsal for the Huili Shanghai Orchestra.
At Huili Nantong, children showcased their talents in whole-school assembly. It featured choir and band performances and even a puppet show. Visual arts pupils also shared their works in feature videos.
In Hangzhou, our Huili and Wellington pupils filled the week with daily music performances, visual art installations around the campus, dramatic monologues and melodrama performances.
Meanwhile, Wellington Tianjin dove deep into music, exploring jazz, baroque, classical Chinese and even Balinese gamelan. The school also had several collaborative visual art projects in the works.
Throughout the entire eight days, pupils, parents and teachers across the Wellington College China Family witnessed the transformative power of the arts. From painting to pottery, singing to sculpture and dance to design, it was an invaluable opportunity to enrich our pupils and inspire them to be learners, connectors and changemakers.
