End of term festivities celebrate community and success
Students at Bedales marked the end of the academic year with a series of events which celebrated successes and achievements in music, drama, art, design and sport, as well as the strength of the Bedales community.
After two years of COVID restrictions, normal service was resumed at Parents’ Day this year, when the community came together for the personal connections and creative endeavours that make Bedales such a vibrant community, including an Art and Design Showcase, Drama and Dance Drop-in, cricket on the Mem Pitch and afternoon tea accompanied by live jazz in the Marquee. View photos from Parents' Day here.
The Lupton Hall was filled with the sound of music as the Parents’ Day Concert brought another academic year of music to a close, with a ‘pops’ programme from the orchestra which opened with A Tribute to John Williams and also included performances from Poppy Brough, Lula Goldring, Mabel Watson and Lila Levingston singing Live and Let Die, Skyfall, Bound to You and the Etta James classic At Last. Closing the concert, the choir sang music from their recent trip to Somerville College, Oxford, including My Spirit Sang All Day by former Bedales parent Gerald Finzi and a come-and-sing chorus of Hallelujah, complete with singers from the audience swelling the choir.
Also on Parents’ Day, Block 3 and 4 (Year 9 and 10) dramatists gave the third and final performance of this year’s summer production, The Kite Runner, in the Olivier Theatre (view photos here). Based on the novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner tells the story of an unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, transcending Afghan values of “guilt, friendship, forgiveness, loss, desire for atonement and desire to be better than who you think you are” – all themes which the Bedales cast tackled in an unforgettable way.
On the tennis courts, the finals of the intra-school tennis tournaments were contested, with Tobias Bonham Carter and Paddy Arrowsmith the winners of the Boys’ Doubles; Eliza McFarlane and Romilly White winners of the Girls’ Doubles; and Hari and Leela Walton winners of the Mixed Doubles. In the singles, Hari Walton and Romilly White were also victorious in the Senior Boys’ and Girls’ Singles respectively, while Zeb Jay was the winner of the Junior Boys’ Singles. Bedales Director of Sport Spencer Leach praised the competitors “for the quality of the tennis and the manner in which they conducted themselves”.
On the last day of term, students gathered in the Quad for the final assembly of the year, which began with the introduction of the new Head Student team – Kipp Bryan, Bella Cutts, Kamaya Nelson-Clayton and Nate Shuster – and included the presentation of a number of student awards and the celebration of 25 years’ service by staff members Richard Sinclair and Neil Hornsby. The Bedalian tradition of leaves-taking, which sees departing 6.2 (Year 13) students shake hands with every student and teacher in the school, was reinstated to mark the end of an extraordinary academic year.
