At Longacre, we believe deeply in allowing the children to be creative and the Creative Arts play a central role in Longacre life. The children have weekly Art & DT, Drama and Music lessons as well as multiple opportunities to work with specialist peripatetic teachers. Allowing all children the opportunity express themselves is crucial to our “A happy heart goes all the way” motto and there are frequent opportunities for performance and showcasing creativity in front of the Longacre community.
All children from Nursery to Form VI have exposure to musical teaching by a team of professional specialists, all practising musicians themselves, as well as a dedicated Music teacher. From Form I upwards, children learn to play various percussion instruments in addition to undertaking formal tuition in recorder, ukulele and voice. Over 75% of pupils at Longacre enjoy individual music tuition with one of our specialist peripatetic music teachers. There are also numerous musical ensembles pupils can join from Senior, Junior and Chamber Choir, to Orchestra, Wind Band, Rock Bands and Ukulele group.
At Longacre there are many musical opportunities for pupils to perform, from informal teatime and breakfast concerts to our annual Formal Concert which is a highly enjoyable black tie evening. In Drama children have the opportunity to take part in the stage productions in Year 4 and Year 6 as well as the less formal ‘Showcases’. They also enjoy live performances and workshops at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford and the Globe Theatre in London and participate in the Shakespeare Schools’ Festival.
We run highly successful Art Masters, Music Masters and Drama Masters programmes aimed at those children who have been identified as gifted and talented in these areas. These weekly after- school programmes help to nurture and develop their skills further and support them in their scholarship applications to senior school. Every year in the summer term, we have a big, whole school celebration of the creative arts with a special themed ‘Creative Arts Week’ dedicated to all things creative in Drama, Art and Music.
