The late, inspirational educational thinker, Sir Ken Robinson posited in his world famous TED talk, ‘Do schools kill creativity?’ that “creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”

Over the last few weeks we have seen some wonderful demonstrations of the power of the application of creativity in the Arts across the School. From our Year 3-5 Production of ‘Aeobsolutely Fable-ulous’, our Year 6-8 Musical ‘The Lion King’, our fantastic Spring Concert to our Creative Arts Expo. Each of these served as a showcase of student engagement and passion and the incredible support of our teachers.

We give great prominence to the Arts as we feel that it is through nurturing creativity that our students are able to develop many key life skills and thinking dispositions associated with exploration of themselves, developing their empathy for others and adoption of traits such as flexibility, refinement and collaboration.

Our incredible music, visual art and drama educators understand that arts education builds confidence, curiosity and creativity. It provides a dictionary of new languages and a passport to a new world.

Contemporary research tells us that arts education has wide ranging benefits for young people. A study undertaken by the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Education and Social Work and The Australia Council for the Arts found that an arts education offered students advantages in a range of academic and well-being measures including “motivation, homework completion, class participation, enjoyment of school, and educational aspirations … self-esteem, life satisfaction, and a sense of meaning or purpose.”

Our arts program is designed to infuse a love of the arts for all who participate and also to encourage our students to have a go at pushing themselves. We find pathways for those with a passion and nurture that too.

While we know that so much has gone into the process of development, it is a delight to be able to witness the culmination of so many hours and so much dedication in these peak school events.

It is uplifting to witness our students’ joy, pride and glowing confidence as we celebrate the culmination of so many hours of ideation, development and refinement.

These events are the result of a tremendous amount of work by our students and by our teachers who have inspired them, nourished them and guided them.

We are so proud of the enriching holistic education provided to our students and believe that our devotion to this area helps us to ensure that we graduate well-rounded, interested and interesting people.

Shabbat Shalom,

Marc Light