Regents Review Winter '18

The Regents Review Winter 2018

DEPARTMENTAL NEWS

One City: No Barriers A group of 9 of our Year 8 students took the opportunity to attend this year’s One City: No Barriers event at Richard Taunton Sixth Form College. Around 50 students from across the city were in attendance. On arrival they were put into groups with students from 4 other schools and, after the ice was broken with some team games, they got down to business of removing barriers. Working with students they didn’t know, each group had 6 minutes to ‘speed date’ with leaders from of a range of communities in Southampton. This year our guests included a City Councillor, the Mayor’s Chaplain (Buddhist), a Quaker, a Muslim, a Street Pastor, a Humanist, a Ba’hai and a Baptist Minister. Our guests were impressed with the level of respect and depth of questioning they experienced! After a short break, the groups had to work as a team to present how they would go about removing barriers and promoting respect across the city. This was a creative exercise and solutions were then presented after lunch. Suggestions this year included: a Game Show Programme, a debate using aliens and different types of pizza to show how much people have in common (even those who don’t like pineapple) and a faith trail where people can follow clues to learn about different communities. Our students made a fantastic impression on all involved and all participated well in the event. Will Crouch was part of the team voted most creative. Hayden Smith and Stacy Williams were part of the team voted most informative. Barriers were certainly broken down with all students saying they had made new friends from across the city and from a mix of races and faiths. Congratulations to Eashan Apadoo, Alex Ballard, Leyla Bilgic, Will Crouch, Olivia Goodwin, Jess Lee, Annalise Ryves, Hayden Smith and Stacy Williams for representing us so well.

RE Year 7 and Year 8 have spent some time working on how art can be used to portray faith. We decided to enter into a national art competition ‘Spirited Arts’ held annually by the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education (NATRE). In it’s 14th year, this competition has attracted over 300,000 participants averaging 20,000 partakers per year since 2004. Hundreds of UK schools get involved, and it gets entries coming from as far afield as Cyprus, Australia, Indonesia and South Africa. This is the first time Regents Park Community College has been involved. Students were given a choice of 5 categories and asked to produce their own artwork and an explanation on that theme. The themes were: ‘Holy Space’, ‘Pray’, ‘Doubt & Faith’, ‘Looking for God’ and ‘Making Peace’. The standard was extremely high, but we were only allowed to choose 10 entries to be sent off to the national competition.

Thoughts Heard by God by Grace Breen

Peace Oblivion by Rihanna Khan

God’s Eye by Phoebe Davis

Blending by Faith Saunders

30