Acceptance and Togetherness
Peponi School believes that pupils that are involved in the creative arts have higher engagement in class, self-esteem, and life satisfaction.
The study of creative arts develops emotional intelligence, confidence and resilience, discipline and commitment, communications skills, identity and belonging, creativity and problem-solving skills and coordination. It also allows recognition of uniqueness and draws out hidden talents and inner capacities. It connects us with our passions and nurtures both acceptance and togetherness.
Art, Photography and Design
‘Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.’ – Pablo Picasso
Our extensive facilities encourage our pupils to explore their creativity and gain lifelong skills, including:
- Confidence and enthusiasm in the development of technical skills in the two and three-dimensional form and composition
- The potential to identify and solve problems in visual and tactile forms
- The ability to develop ideas from conception to realisation.
We teach a wide spectrum of media, materials, techniques, processes and technologies that allows our pupils to experience many fields. They find their own voice and direction, building confidence in each other whilst developing their understanding of visual communication.
Within the Extra-Curricular, the department encourages collaboration, involvement and support of the other disciplines especially in the Creative Arts – Music and Drama.
In addition, the department runs a whole school annual Art Competition to offer all our pupils an opportunity to exercise their creativity, culminating in a final Art Exhibition where winners are awarded accordingly.
There is also a twice-weekly opportunity within the school’s activity programme available to all pupils who might wish to enhance their academic Art or, simply, experiment with their passion for creativity.
Dance
‘Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.’ – Voltaire
Whilst Drama features in the Peponi School’s Activity Programme, Dance at Peponi School enjoys a unique profile. The annual Inter-House Dance Competition unites both House and School communities enormously, whether it is fast, slow, choreographed or freestyle, the passion and the energy resonating from the dance floor is thrilling.
Houses are given a theme and a small budget, and the rest is left to the pupils themselves. They design the stage, costumes, lighting and choreography presented with an underlying narrative. All coming together to help provide each House’s distinct interpretation of the theme.
Performances are delivered in the Main Hall at the end of the Michaelmas term; external judges help assess each House’s production and a winning House emerges. This has produced a balanced list of successful Houses of late, and whether it’s girl or boy, young or old, day-pupil or boarder, all can participate, represent and perform.
Drama
‘I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being’. – Oscar Wilde
Drama at Peponi School thrives within both academic and extra-curricular realms: we are proud that, as our love of theatre and performance continues to thrive, so does our community. Within the classroom, drama is taught at GCSE and A level, and within the extra-curricular, there is a twice-weekly opportunity for pupils to take to the stage, or back-stage.
Within our school’s drama calendar is the Inter-House drama competition and the school play. Our Houses ‘raise the bar’ as they battle it out on stage with short, one-act plays or a series of dramatic monologues, group-dramatised poetry or devised work using other creative stimuli. The categories include both junior and senior competitions, often providing a feast of entertainment, whilst unearthing both talent and self-confidence.
And, for the school play, the whole community comes together to experience an annual production which typically alternates between straight plays and musicals: The Crucible and Twelfth Night have graced the stage recently along with Cabaret and Oliver!
Drama is becoming increasingly popular, giving pupils yet another opportunity to realise their artistic and creative abilities; with such tradition in theatre, great thespians emerge from Peponi School’s stages.
Music
Under the guidance of our Director of Music, our music department boasts more than a dozen visiting instrumental and singing teachers. There is an extensive suite of teaching and practice rooms along with a recording studio providing the perfect space for school ensembles to rehearse and then finally perform in the School Hall, the School Chapel and wherever possible within the wider Nairobi community.
Within the extra-curricular, music occupies a crucial place within our Activity Programme and among Houses activities and competitions. The annual Battle of the Bands project involves all Shell pupils whilst the Inter-House music competition regularly features more than half of the school. There are weekly opportunities for School Choir, Chapel Choir, String Ensembles, Brass Ensembles, Orchestra, Rock Band and more recently introduced, Music Production.
We have successfully staged productions of Evita, Grease and Cabaret in recent years and we enjoy sharing musical challenges and performances with our own Preparatory School, Peponi House, including Joint Concerts, as well as playing host to Kenya’s Young Musician/Vocalist of the Year competitions, often producing finalists and winners in various categories. We have hosted residential courses for the National Youth Orchestra of Kenya (KNYO) and currently, a sizable number of our pupils are members of KNYO, SYO (Safaricom Youth Orchestra) and, increasingly, Nairobi Orchestra.
