This is the highest award that can be achieved and truly recognises the investment that we place in our arts activities, both within the classroom and beyond to showcase and promote the talent, passion, engagement and confidence of our students! It recognises the continued excellence in the arts at Trinity School and how we have continued to build on this over the past two years. In particular, Arts Council England highlighted our commitment to the arts and our ‘proactive approach in ensuring we get the best from our pupils’, including identifying new Year 7’s strengths in the arts before they join the school. They recognised our on-going strengths in encouraging our Sixth Form arts students to lead in various activities, including clubs and whole school events such as House Performing Arts. They also recognised the strategies employed to increase the number of boys taking up dance.

Arts Council England were impressed with the many partnerships that we have formed with local schools and with various arts organisations to further promote and engage our students in the arts. In particular, this includes Trinity staff going out to local primary schools to lead on teaching and arts workshops and also engaging with many arts organisations and practitioners to come to Trinity and work with our students, with a clear, positive impact on our students’ progress. It was clear to the Arts Council that we promote many different career pathways within the creative and performing arts and that we ourselves complete outreach work to support other schools in developing their arts curriculum.

As a school we pride ourselves on the high quality of arts curriculum provided for our students and for the outstanding, high quality events that share the talent of our students. Events such as our annual school show, most recently Peter Pan, feature a large main cast and all of our year 7s performing on stage; our annual sell-out dance festival allows all KS3 students, along with GCSE and BTEC groups to share their progress in dance and the growth of our singing ethos across Trinity and the wider Newbury Academy Trust is showcased through numerous music events across the year, including the appearance of the NAT Choir at our Christmas and Summer Concerts.

It is sure to be a very exciting year for the arts at Trinity with many more brilliant opportunities for our students both in the classroom and through up-coming events, including drama students participating in Shakespeare Schools’ Festival in November, our Christmas Concert in December, Breakout Dance Sharing Platform in January and one of the biggest events on our school calendar, our school show, which this year is Disney’s Beauty and the Beast!