On Wednesday evening, the girls’ U14 side faced Alton. This was the first time the team had played together, and for the majority of the side, the first time they had a competitive fixture on a full-sized pitch. It was therefore perhaps not surprising that early on the Bedales team found themselves 2-0 down. However, it was incredibly impressive to see the way in which the side rallied and forced their way back into the game – much credit due to the work in the middle of the pitch from Daisy Milton and Agnes Bathurst – to bring the scores level at half-time.
Some focused and brave defending from Jazz Daly and Jazzy Jordan kept a talented Alton side at bay for a good period of the second half, but once again the Bedales side found themselves two goals behind. It is clear to see that with this side though, Bedales are never out of the game; some driving forward runs from Ella Reid, Poppy Daly and Phoebe Land forced attacking territory and Bedales managed to get themselves back into the game 4-4 with eight minutes to play. The consistently hard-working Tallulah Plant, Inaya Strong and Iris Biles were putting everything in an attempt to force a victory, but it was not to be, and despite some excellent clearances from debutant goalkeeper Freya Hunt, Alton grabbed two goals in quick succession to finish 6-4 winners.
A thrilling game and exciting times ahead for this developing side.
The girls’ second XI hockey team travelled to Churcher’s College for their first game in many months on Wednesday. Churcher’s were combative and difficult to contain, but with the help of some versatility from Greta Stilwell, who played in three different positions during the match, we were able to draw level at 1-1.
Our first goal came with Ottilie finishing the move after a lively and skiful drive into the D by the ever busy and purposeful Sage Bidwell. Ultimately, the game would be lost (final score: 8-2) but there were some very promising passages of play with the two Bedales wingers – including captain Anna Tasker and Rosy Riley – lighting up the attacking line and causing lots of problems for the opposition. The second Bedales goal was a wonderful individual effort from Rosy, who broke free down the right wing and cut into the ‘D’, finishing decisively in the bottom corner.
There were excellent performances in defence from Maya Cressman and Lula Goldring, who were often facing an attacking overload but continued to put in strong tackles and vital clearances. The moment of the game came after a deflected long-range shot seemed destined or the Bedales top corner, only to be denied by an outstanding one-handed tip over the bar from goalkeeper Rosie Voyantzis. It was an excellent game showing lots of promise for the season ahead. Our Monday practice sessions will continue to develop the team’s cohesiveness and fitness levels. Well done to everyone involved!
There was a sense of nervousness and excitement on the Astro on Wednesday as the girls’ first XI hockey team were back in action after a COVID enforced break. The team knew they had to be ‘switched on’ as they were facing a quality opposition in Churcher’s first XI and the match certainly lived up to expectations with both sides looking to play good hockey. It was Churcher’s who held the majority of attacking possession, but good saves from Tilda Gellatly and some timely interceptions from Shanklin Mackillop-Hall kept the Churcher’s side at bay for the majority of the first half. This, alongside the impressive Alisia Leach and phenomenal work-rate of forwards Mathilda Douglas and Kamaya Nelson Clayton, made for an enthralling encounter.
As the game moved into the second half, an unfortunate deflected own goal put the Churcher’s side 2-0 up. But, by virtue of her ‘do as I do’ approach, captain Esther Stewart kept the team focused and an exceptional stick save from the Churcher’s goalkeeper stopped Mathilda Douglas’ brave attempt to bring Bedales back into the game. As the match progressed, tiredness crept in and an increasing number of opportunities fell to the Churcher’s side – although it is fair to say that without the presence and influence of Rebekah Leach at centre-half, there would have been a greater number of opportunities.
At the final whistle, it was a deserved victory for Churcher’s, but there are a huge amount of positives for the Bedales side to take into the Hampshire U18 Trophy Tournament next week.
By Sage Bidwell, Lola Mackay and Emily Kavanagh, Block 5
We are a group of Block 5 students who are doing a Global Awareness project on homelessness and poverty. We have linked the aims of our project with the annual Harvest Festival food collection and plan to hold a food collection week at Bedales from 4-10 October.
We are working with the Petersfield Food Bank to provide food and hygiene products for the homeless and would be grateful for any donations. If you would like to donate, you can view a list of items requested by the Petersfield Food Bank below. However, any donations are a great help to our local community. Our collection point is based outside G1 (the ground floor Geography classroom in the atrium). If you have any questions, please email us via Abi Wharton (awharton@bedales.org.uk). Thank you for your support.
Tinned soup
Tinned tomatoes
Tinned fish
Tinned meat
Baked beans
Tinned pulses
Tinned or packet custard
Tinned rice pudding
Coffee
Tea
Hot chocolate
Long life milk
Biscuits
Crackers
Couscous
Instant Noodles
Cup a soup
Pasta
Rice
Cereal
Oats
Sugar
Treats (chocolate bars, nuts, crisps, etc)
Toiletries (including sanitary products)
By Rose Purves, Turi Spens and Charles Walls, Block 5
As part of a Block 5 BAC Global Awareness project, we are researching the refugee crisis. We are partnering with the Rural Refugee Network (RRN), a local charity whose mission is to help bring refugees to safety in the UK and, once here, to help them successfully resettle into their new communities. The RNN offers grants for education, training and employment to families and young people placed across Hampshire.
We will be raising money by planning, putting on and hosting a charity art show for the RRN in late November. Our target is to raise £25,000 to aid them in their vital work. We would be grateful for any donations – please do speak with family or friends and let us know if you are able to donate any pieces of work for the show and email us via Abi Wharton (awharton@bedales.org.uk). Thank you in advance for your support.
By Hayley Cole, Head of Drama Photo by Beau Brentnall, 6.2
This year marks 25 years since the opening of the Bedales Olivier Theatre. To celebrate, we wanted to pay homage to some of the original work staged there. As the first piece performed at the Theatre was My Mother Said I Never Should by Charlotte Keatley, directed by a female student, we decided to invite a female Old Bedalian and professional in the field back to Bedales to direct a feminist play this term for the Sixth Form Show.
Evangeline Cullingworth has worked with the department as a practitioner over the last few years and assisted all year groups in academic and co-curricular performance projects. It is an honour to invite her back as our external director this term and we are excited to share this year’s Sixth Form Show, Image of an Unknown Woman by Elinor Cook, with you on 12 and 13 October (book tickets here).
6.2 student and Theatre Don Aryana Taheri Murphy recently interviewed Evangeline and cast member Beau Brentnall photographed the rehearsal session. Read Aryana’s interview below.
By Aryana Taheri Murphy, 6.2 and Theatre Don
Evangeline joined Bedales in 2011, where she studied A Levels in Drama, Music and English. She went on to study Theatre at NYU Tisch and completed an MA in residence at the Orange Tree Theatre. She has worked at the Hampstead Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith and Royal Opera House training under Katie Mitchell. She is especially interested in community engagement and increasing access to opera, after working on RhineGold with Birmingham Opera company.
Evangeline was attracted to Bedales for the quality of the work, both academic and artistic, as well as the vast number of opportunities and how respected the arts are within the school. She had always been interested in drama since a young child, however, after joining Bedales she became more dedicated and serious about a career in the industry. She explained that by working towards her A Levels and being involved with the Sixth Form Show, she was able to learn from the “high level of production quality” and the “incredible experience” of being a part of the Theatre. One memory she shared from her Sixth Form Show performance was smashing a watermelon (with a sponge soaked in stage blood) with a hammer and it splattering all over her clothes and face, to create the effect that she was smashing someone’s head in. She recalled the shock from the audience and her feeling of being completely out of her comfort zone but also her excitement of the experience.
This year Evangeline is directing Image of an Unknown Young Women. She explained how she attended a workshop several years ago when the play was first published and found that it stuck with her for its exploration of the impact of social media. She further explained how the play seemed more relevant now, as the only way we have been able to connect for the past two years is through phones. It made her look differently towards the piece, as 2020-2021 has been a time where “social media meets activism”.
By Abi Wharton, Head of Geography, Global Perspectives and Politics
The UK will host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow on 31 October – 12 November 2021. The aim of this conference is to bring the world together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
As Alok Sharma, the COP President-Designate states: “The COVID-19 pandemic has brought devastation to millions around the world, disrupting many parts of the global economy. But climate change has continued, and it ultimately threatens life on earth. As countries begin to recover from the Coronavirus pandemic, we must take the historic opportunity to tackle climate change at the same time – to build back better, and greener. And we must. To keep the temperature of the planet under control – limiting its increase to 1.5 degrees – the science dictates that by the second half of the century, we should be producing less carbon than we take out of the atmosphere. This is what reaching ‘net zero’ means. The journey is already underway. Despite the pandemic, the direction of travel is changing. Around 70% of the world economy is now covered by net zero targets, up from less than 30% when the UK took on the Presidency of COP26. The world is moving towards a low carbon future.”
These aims must clearly be considered at a personal, local and national level to be successful globally. We are rightly very proud of our Bedales student body who are all too aware of the impact previous generations have had on the environment, and their responsibility to do more, and quickly, to protect the planet. Across the curriculum, students are conducting innovative academic research to prepare them to be the change makers of the future. Geography BAC students study a bespoke module on climate change unlike any other course at this level in the UK, and the Block 3 collaborative project between Philosophy, Religion and Ethics (PRE) and Geography focuses on ‘Who made my clothes?’, tackling globalisation, the winners and losers of a globalised economy, and the ethical implications of business practices on people and the environment. In Pre-U Global Perspectives students have chosen to research topics such as ‘The effect of COVID-19 on consumerism’ and ‘Is sustainability in the fashion industry sustainable?’ In tandem with this, students from across the year groups continue to be involved in a range of activities to raise awareness about the urgent need to do more.
As a prelude to the global conference taking place in Glasgow, East Hampshire MP Damian Hinds, in conjunction with East Hampshire District Council, has organised a local climate conference focusing on the action that can be taken locally to accelerate decarbonisation. The conference, which will involve Bedales students, will take place on Friday 8 October at The Maltings in Alton, to which everyone is invited. More information can be found on Damian Hinds’ website here and tickets can be booked here.
On 21 September, Bedales students had the opportunity to attend the Stand Up Free and Equal Conference, which due to COVID was held virtually in the SLT. It was not only an enriching experience, but one that provided us with transformative insight on how to not only not be racist, but to be actively anti-racist.
The conference included speakers such as Lee Lawrence, author of The Louder I Sing; artist and educator Linett Kamala; student activist Sophie Kabangu; retired headteacher and educational consultant Tom Wilson; and eight-year-old Nylah Abitimo-Jones.
Lee shared his tragic yet inspiring story on how he witnessed the almost fatal shooting of his mother in his own home by a white police officer. His moving speech stressed the importance of restorative justice, and how the road to fighting racism should include conversation and understanding rather than just objective punishment. He provided us with valuable insight on how to best communicate our unconscious biases, and how to work on re-configuring our perceptions and attitudes on race. He stated that “injustice perpetuates because there is a misunderstanding of what racism means…racism is not simply prejudice, racism is prejudice plus power”. The idea of racism being fundamentally rooted in a power imbalance is one that can be observed in his own, real life experience of having the police exploit their power over his family.
Nylah presented her powerful poem, Black, and her young age did not stop her from delivering a moving and inspiring performance. She celebrated the beauty of her own culture, as well as rejecting Eurocentric beauty standards and bringing to light the micro-aggressions of having people, for example, constantly touch her hair. It was an evocative speech that allowed us to realise that even at such a young age, she had been forced to mature to a level where she must be aware of people treating her differently for her race.
The speeches were both informative and empowering, and allowed for us as students to really immerse ourselves in the process of simply listening to the experiences of the speakers, and to learn and recognise our own privilege and biases.
Sunday 26 September marks the 20th European Day of Languages – a celebration of the linguistic and cultural diversity of Europe – and to mark the occasion, the @bedaleslanguages Instagram account will be running competitions for Bedales students.
Europe’s linguistic and cultural diversity is quite remarkable. I still remember the Eurostar opening its first service between Waterloo and Paris when I was in my teens, and it transformed everything. Whereas up until then France had been a faraway place requiring a flight, a lengthy ferry ride, or a hovercraft ride (cancelled at the whim of the weather), you could now get on a train and be surrounded by anothe rlanguage within a couple of hours. From Paris or Brussels you could be surrounded by other languages still, within another hour or two of a connecting train. On a three-day trip from London to Moscow by rail you are exposed to English, French, Flemish, German, Polish, Belorussian and Russian.
In the era of COVID, many of these opportunities for travel have diminished due to the headache-inducing formalities and costs of proving your freedom from infection. Nevertheless, foreign languages are so much closer to us islanders than they used to be. Gone are the days of bringing back VHS tapes from the continent that only played in grainy black and white. Through online streaming platforms to language apps, languages are now fully accessible. Language and culture are so heavily intertwined that to celebrate linguistic diversity is to celebrate cultural diversity. If the whole of Europe spoke English, what would the effect be on European culture? Would we get such visible cultural differences between France and Italy, say? With free movement, the greatest markers of national boundaries are languages.
Brexit, as well as French and German A Level uptake in freefall on a national level, reductions in the numbers of European language undergraduates, and a lack of recognition of the importance of languages all point to a crisis in language learning. Sadly languages are often seen purely as a bonus commodity, a pathway to business opportunities that can be circumnavigated with English – but languages are so much more than that. The Day of European Languages is an opportunity to celebrate the diversity of geographical Europe (not the political Europe), something which a lack of free and easy travel to Europe for pleasure could lead us to forget, were it not for the internet.
Over the past week, I have been joined by three other students in virtually attending the Round Square International Conference. This is an annual conference held with the goal of engaging students in prominent social issues that will effect the world they grow up in, with this year being focused on the topic of ‘Blue Skies and Brave Conversations’. Over the course of four days, we learnt about topics ranging from ethical leadership to the variety of identities that are attributed to people.
The conference was made up of three main sections. Each day, student delegates met with representatives of other school to discuss how our schools address the issues being discussed by each days topic. While this was happening, there were also cultural performance from schools or short documentaries to broaden the perspectives of students. From here, we went on to watch a discussion between keynote speakers, where they were questioned by students on how they view the various topics of discussion. Lastly, we joined other schools in smaller Zoom meetings so that individual students could voice their opinions on what was discussed and engage in a productive conversation on how we can improve the world we live in.
Ultimately, it has been an immensely enlightening experience as I personally have learned far more than I could ever have expected to. The goal of these conferences is to innovate how students learn, and I’m sure that the other delegates from Bedales can confirm that this year’s conference has succeeded. From learning about how other cultures operate to the way the world should run, we have all taken a lot from the past week and have gained an equal number of ideas to think about.
In Jaw this week, I spoke about the ethics of buying smartphones. Having recently broken my own phone, I described the dilemma I faced when I came to replacing it. I talked about an event I attended here at Bedales a few years ago, where former Head of BBC News James Harding explained that most of the cobalt found in lithium-ion batteries – the rechargeable batteries found in all smartphones – is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where men, women and children endure dangerous and unhealthy conditions to source the element for mobile devices. This essentially means that quite a lot of us carry around with us in our pockets something that is the product of child labour.
All of this had left me wondering how I can work in a school, and care for some people’s children, whilst ignoring the plight of others. That, in turn, got me thinking about an excellent book I’ve read – The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer – which argues that although we can often feel helpless to solve global issues, we actually have a moral obligation to do something, and we should really be thinking of these global problems as our problems. If we wouldn’t think twice about rescuing a child drowning in a pond immediately in front of us, why are we reluctant to do our bit to help children in danger several thousand miles away? For me, it felt disingenuous to live a life based around caring for children, whilst ignoring other children, just because they’re far away.
I also touched upon other important issues to consider, such as the sustainability of resources used to produce smartphones, and widespread concerns about the working conditions and pay of those producing them. Use of smartphones has risen exponentially over the last few years, and as they become a staple of everyday life and use continues to rise, the ethical impact of what we do with smartphones will become more significant.
I asked students to consider the ethical weight of their smart phone. What are they carrying in their pocket? What is the moral dilemma they should face when they think about replacing their smartphone? What can they do? Addressing the advantages and disadvantages of each, I presented a range of options, from keeping a particular handset for longer than the original contract or buying a reconditioned, second-hand phone, to buying a phone from an ethical brand, such as Freephone or Teracube, who work to ensure fairer supply chains, use recycled materials, and pay fair wages.
We are a long way from a perfect solution, but I hope my talk has encouraged students to start thinking about these issues and, when they next come to replace their smartphone, consider the ethical weight of the phone they choose. As for me? For Christmas, I’m going to ask for my iPhone to be repaired.
Bedales School Blog 
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