DE LA SALLE SAYS PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT!

Young Dancers from De La Salle School, partner primaries and newly formed Bespoke Dance Company are joining CLIC Sargents nationwide campaign, supported by the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD), to improve their dance skills for their up and coming performance whilst raising money for children with cancer.

Teachers and their students at De La Salle (a school specialising in the Arts) and Bespoke have taken practice to a whole new level by signing up to take part in Practice-a-thon Dance, ran by children’s cancer charity, CLIC Sargent, which sees students getting sponsored to dance, or hold their own dance event.

Julia Cross, Communty Arts Officer at De La Salle School says: “The students are using Practice-a-thon Dance to pack in extra rehearsals ahead of their 1980’s themed Dance Show, It Was Acceptable in the 80s, which will take place at St Helens Theatre Royal on 13 th, 14 th and 15 th July 2009. We’re delighted to be supporting Practice-a-thon Dance. The students have really got behind the idea and are very enthused about practicing. By doing what they love best, they’re not only improving their dance skills, but they’re also helping young people with cancer”.

Of the money raised by Practice-a-thon Dance, 75% will be used by CLIC Sargent to fund services benefiting the 10 children and young people diagnosed with cancer or leukaemia everyday in the UK, whilst De La Salle will be able to keep up to 25% to put back into dance provision.

For more details about CLIC Sargent, Bespoke Dance Company or to book tickets for the show, please contact Julia Cross (Community Arts Officer) on 01744 736412 or email artsadmin.delasalle@sthelens.org.uk

St Helen’s Gets Creative about Rubbish!

Schoolchildren set their sights on sculpting, after saving used cartons and packaging materials such as egg boxes, cereal packets and milk and orange cartons. Year 8 pupils from across St Helens attended a workshop at De La Salle School, Eccleston, St Helens hoping to turn their rubbish into art.

The project was organized by art teachers Joanne Fernside (St Aelred’s) and Fred Leather (De La Salle).

Fred Leather, Head of Art said: “This was a collaborative workshop answering how can children show what the economic recession means to them? We did this by making sculptures from disgarded products demonstrating how something that appears worthless or rubbish can become something of beauty and importance.”

Both teachers said that the children are extremely enthusiastic about art projects using recycling.

As a visual and performing arts specialist school, De La Salle School were keen to host the event and hopes to raise concerns about Economic Recession.

The art work produced will be on show at De La Salle’s 19 th annual Art Exhibition alongside GCSE work and even an exhibition of artist Peter Oakley’s work. For more details about the exhibition and other visual and performing art events at the school this summer, please contact Julia Cross (Community Arts Officer) on 01744 736412 or email artsadmin.delasalle@sthelens.org.uk

De La Salle School performed Andrew Lloyd Webbers musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat at the end of June. Students (and some teachers!) played to full houses over four evenings.

After months of rehearsals the performance was a huge celebration of all of the hard work and committment that had gone in to putting the show together. A big thank you to all the students for putting on such a good show, the performing arts staff and others involved for their commitment and dedication and to our audiences, thank you for your support and we hope you enjoyed the show.

After each performance we collected money to help towards our bid to buy some rostra seating. Rostra seating will provide a raked seating area to improve our audiences view. We are pleased to announce that over £600.00 was raised over the four evenings. This will significantly help towards our fundraising and we would like to thank all of those who made generous donations.