Category Archives: Uncategorized

Old Bedalians in the music industry

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By Neil Hornsby, Head of Contemporary Music

Minke

The lockdown period has been an amazingly creative time for musicians around the world and our current Contemporary Music students have been inspired by following the online exploits of some of our musical alumni.

Delilah Montagu (OB 2016) performed with South African DJ and producer Black Coffee in the One World: Together At Home concert on 18 April that featured a huge range of the world’s biggest stars in music from Billie Eilish to Elton John and the Rolling Stones. Marika Hackman (2010) played the DIYsolation Festival, Minke (Leah Mason, 2009) has been extremely active from her living room in Los Angeles, performing at several online gigs including the Uncancelled Music Festival and 7 Layers, Quarantine Edition. Minke’s brilliant new single, Elsewhere, is released today across all platforms. Listen to it on Spotify here, follow her on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and catch her in a lockdown gig soon!

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Notes from the Bedales Apiary

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By Marcella Craven, Outdoor Work Technician and Beekeeper

Beekeepers all over the country watch their hives intently at this time of year.

All the long winter we have fed our bees with fondant, checked that the hives haven’t blown over (at Bedales we weighted our roofs down with slabs during the severe winds and we still had one fly off)! We treated the hives for disease.  We also worried that pests might have got into the hives, silently wrecking the comb, eating stores or consuming bees! Woodpeckers, badgers, mice, wasps and worse of all, man-made poisons, insecticides and sprays all present a serious risk to the hives.

This year the weather has not been good for bees. Wet, mild weather makes hives damp.  Bees can’t fly to make cleansing flights, and the colony can chill easily. Global warming is changing our seasons and this causes a difference to the forage available, and the weather which a bee needs to be able to venture out and retrieve it.  I have observed that life for a colony is complex and often mirrors our human problems.

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Contemporary Music students get creative in lockdown

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By Neil Hornsby, Head of Contemporary Music

August-Janklow

When Bedales closed its doors to students five weeks ago, I set our students the task of producing some online content that would both help to keep them busy and also hopefully bring one or two smiles to the faces of the Bedales community. What has since followed has been one of the most meaningful and creative periods I have ever had the fortune of witnessing in all of my years at Bedales.

From spectacular original songs to fun covers, innovative video collaborations to hilarious outtakes. Students have been constantly learning new skills to turn their creative visions into very real end product. From how to record bands across three continents with limited equipment, using specialist music and editing software to create professional quality video, learning stop motion video techniques, researching how best to stream live concerts (more of which to follow in the coming weeks) and learning new ways to collaborate with each other during this unique period. We’ve been sharing the finished results on our social media channels, but if you’ve missed any, you can access all the videos on the Bedales Vimeo channel here.

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Filmmaking in Nepal

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By Jake Morris, 6.1

In February half term, I went to Nepal – a country with an incredibly rich and diverse culture, which makes it the perfect basis for a film.

It seems that whenever anyone speaks about Nepal, they instantly think of the Himalayas or Mount Everest, but not nearly as many people speak about who or what lies beneath the villages clinging to existence on the mountain slopes (they may look photogenic to Westerners, but in reality, people there live below the poverty line) or the extensive smog that hangs above the hustle and bustle of its capital city, Kathmandu.

When I realised this, the title of the film – ‘Light and Shade’ – came into my mind. It was an idea with two meanings; the physical light contrast, but also the way of Nepali life being so different to ours.

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Block 3 Art students sketch the view from their windows

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By Andy Cheese, Teacher of Art

During the first week of remote learning, I wanted to extend students’ drawing skills using a basic theme of ‘looking out the window’.

I supported this task with a sheet on what to focus on when drawing – for example, concentrate on the foreground detail, or make the background more interesting. I also added more support sheets on perspective – one and two-point – if some of the students wanted to complete some exercises while we are working from home.

You can see some of the finished pieces of work below.

dylan hui

By Dylan Hui

george bedford

By George Bedford

jamie bradbury

By Jamie Bradbury

madeline Farley

By Madeline Farley

Matilda (Alejandra-Matilde) Celma Rodriguez-Fonseca - drawing window

By Matilda Celma Rodriguez-Fonseca

 

Living and thinking sustainably

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Sustainability

This article was originally published in the Old Bedalian Newsletter 2020.

The whole school community has been doing more to reuse, reduce and recycle in the wake of the climate change campaign that has been dominating the streets and the media, drawing attention to the urgency of the global changes that need to be made.

Bedales hosted a ‘Funeral for the Planet’ earlier this year, where a climate emergency was announced. The event was organised by Bedales Head of Geography Paul Turner, who became one of the UK’s first United Nations-accredited climate change teachers. Bedales’ Geography department has also recently launched the UK’s first climate breakdown scheme of work, collaborating with other teachers and organisations.

Following this, a group of 60 students joined a climate change protest in March, marching from Parliament Square to Buckingham Palace and were encouraged by the amount of support they received from tourists, construction workers and even police officers. Students took part in more protests in Petersfield and in London, with a small group attending a symposium on climate change at the London School of Economics. A number of speakers were present including Lord Stern, Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, who addressed the question of, ‘What should individuals, communities, schools and universities do to stop climate change?’

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What a week for Utopian thinking…

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By Clare Jarmy, Head of Able, Gifted & Talented, Oxbridge, Academic Scholars & PRE

The Utopia Project is the longest-established part of the Bedales Assessed Course in Philosophy, Religion and Ethics (PRE) and, as PRE is one of the oldest BACs, it is therefore one of the best established BAC modules. These have been new, different times in which to think about society and utopia, and I am sure that these events will colour how we see the project in the future.

On Wednesday afternoon, Block 5 presented their Utopias to their teachers, and to each other, in an Expo in the Library. Every year, I am impressed with the sophistication of students’ work. The project, for most students, fosters independence in a wholly new way. The Utopia Project is effectively a blank sheet of paper for students to formulate a vision for a perfect world. It is structured for them, and they have to refer to five key texts, but their Utopias can end up being utterly different.

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An old-fashioned Bedales fireside

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By Clare Jarmy, Head of Able, Gifted & Talented, Oxbridge, Academic Scholars & PRE

It’s a temptation once you’ve been here a while to harken back to the old days as if you were there. The reality is that the Bedales ‘fireside’ – a relaxed evening with music, snacks, games and chatting round a fire – has not been a staple part of the Bedales way of life for a long time, probably not since the times when staying in at the weekend was the norm for everyone. But the important thing about being aware of a school’s history and ethos is that you have a vocabulary, an established set of practices, on which to draw, especially in more challenging times.

So what could have been more appropriate on Thursday night than to spend the evening round the fire with the Bedalians who were still in school – many here to keep working on Art and Design – playing games, chatting, drinking hot chocolate, and listening to music? We had Monopoly, jigsaws, word games, and some very special Star Wars Lego that Clive Burch had saved for such an occasion!

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Conserving the Bedales Archive

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Bedales-Archive

Last week Jane Kirby (Old Bedalian and Volunteer Archivist) and Ian Douglas (Librarian) attended a conservation workshop arranged by the School Archivists Group. This organisation brings together staff and volunteers working in over 250 independent schools, who between them share responsibility for looking after a vital part of the national heritage.

Top of the bill on this occasion was expert advice on preserving photographs, film and textiles. Jane and Ian can now confidently distinguish an albumen print from a silver gelatin print, and understand their different preservation needs. We have also been cautiously sniffing our film collection for signs of the dreaded ‘vinegar syndrome’.

In our own recent conservation work, Jane has been making bespoke light-proof boxes, to protect some early Bedalians’ photo albums. Ian has conserved and rebound this 1930s diary written by Dunhurst pupils.

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‘Beautifully nuanced’ A Level Scripted and Devised performances

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By Caitlin Nugent, 6.1

On Tuesday, the 6.2 A Level students performed two pieces across the course of the evening. Firstly, they performed scripted pieces in a naturalistic style, working in groups of two or three to perform short extracts from contemporary plays such as The One by Vicky Jones and After the End by Dennis Kelly.

Each of the extracts was performed in an intensely realistic manner and it was clear that the 6.2s had been working hard to prepare beautifully nuanced pieces. Later on that evening in the Theatre, we watched their devised pieces, which were created in the style of a variety of practitioners, including Grotowski and the Belarus Free Theatre.

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