LUMINATE - CAPA and TAS Showcase

What an incredible night at Luminate, our Visual Art, TAS, Music, Drama and Photography Showcase! With over 200 members of our school community attending, it was a fantastic celebration of the creativity, talent and hard work of our students.

Guests explored an impressive display of student artworks, technology and applied science projects, enjoyed live performances from Music and Drama, and sampled delicious food prepared by our Year 10 Food Technology

students especially for the evening.

Luminate was a huge success and a wonderful opportunity for our students to share their skills, creativity and achievements with their families and community. A huge congratulations to all of the students and staff involved in making the night so special!

HPGE Creative Community Project Installation

Our High Potential and Gifted Education (HPGE) Creative Domain Stage 4 students are nearing the completion of their community project, Street Library. The Street Library will be installed in the Beresfield community, outside of the Anglican Parish on Thursday 27th August. Students, Jasmine Buchanan, Marcus Shaw, Jet Mendoza, Vicky Munzenberger and Darcie Taylor have engaged in authentic artmaking practice, designing and constructing a functional street library that will serve the local community.

Please keep a look out for the new community facility , Street Libraries are beautiful homes for books and give you access to free books and provide you with the chance to experience the joy of reading while getting out and about in your local area.

Many street libraries are in convenient locations near a park or a shopping centre.

Street libraries encourage books to be recycled and shared by:

providing any member of the community access to literature and the joys of reading
providing opportunities for community members to meet, connect and socialise
enlivening and activating public spaces.
ART MATTERS - Secondary
20 students from the Hunter district worked at Maitland Regional Art Gallery with artist Jane Lander across two days in an intensive artmaking program focused on fostering technical ability within Visual Arts and expanding conceptual understanding. Year 10 student Halle McIntyre, Year 9 students Harmony Cooper and Keira Sharrock and Year 8 student Jaxon Sinclair participated alongside students from the Hunter School of Performing Arts, Merewether and Newcastle High in creating organic 3D sculptures representing the idea of ‘shelter’ then converted their thinking into 2D form. Students, led by Hunter artist Jane Lander, deepened their technical skills in drawing a still life scene, challenging students to ‘see’ in new ways and work outside of their comfort zone. On the last day of the workshop, students’ creative processes were exhibited at Maitland Regional Art Gallery with parents and community invited to view their two-day intensive practice. An invaluable opportunity for young creatives.

Art Club Update – New Day & Location

Art Club will now run every Wednesday at first break in E7.

Students are welcome to drop in at any time to work on:

• Class projects

• Assessment tasks

• Catch-up work

• Personal artworks and mixed media projects

Art Club is a relaxed and creative space for students to develop their skills, experiment with materials, and enjoy making art with others. Everyone is welcome — whether you need help catching up or just want extra studio time!

Photo Club – New CAPA Club

Photo Club runs every Wednesday at second break in E6. It's the perfect place to build your photography skills in a relaxed and supportive environment.

Students will:

Learn composition techniques
Practise taking photos
Use specialist equipment, including DSLR cameras

Students who join are also invited to become part of the Photo Crew, capturing photos at school events such as PBL assemblies, NAIDOC Day, and the Luminate Showcase.

Whether you're keen to build your photography skills or want to be behind the lens at school events, everyone's welcome!

Music:

Year 8: Year 8 Music students are working towards their third assessment task, which includes both a performance and listening component. Students have the choice to perform individually or as part of a group on an instrument of their choice. They are also exploring the purpose of music and developing their understanding of how different pieces are structured.

Year 9: Year 9 Music students are exploring the exciting world of blues and jazz music. They are learning to play the 12-bar blues chord progression and developing their improvisation skills by creating simple melodies over the top. Students are building their confidence in performing and experimenting with musical ideas through improvisation.

Year 10: Year 10 has been refining their practical works through group performance projects and rehearsals. During theory lessons, they have been exploring the Beatles and comparing their work to later genres including rock, metal, psychedelic and pop.

Year 11: Year 11 music are hard at work preparing for their first performance assessment. The class has been working as groups, supporting each other and as individuals refining their own skills. They have also been memorising key musical concepts to prepare themselves for their first year 12 in term 4 assessment.

Year 12: Year 12 Music students are in the final stretch, with their practical examination scheduled for Monday 14 September. We wish them all the very best as they prepare for this important milestone and look forward to seeing their amazing final works!

Drama:

Year 9: This term students are making their own films! They’re creating the characters, scenarios, and scripts themselves based off the stimulus ORANGE. This is a new program written by the Department of Education and has engaged students from the get go! In the coming weeks, students will refine their performances, film their scenes, and edit their video to create a polished and professional final product. Amazing work, year 9!

Year 11: Students are engaging with some of the most influential Drama practitioners this term. They’re exploring the dramatic practices and philosophies of Stanislavski and Artaud- polar opposites! One is rooted in actors embodying completely realistic characters, and the other rejects realism entirely, pushing actors to create intense, visceral, sensory experiences designed to shock, disturb, and awaken the audience. Students will apply their understanding of one practitioner to a performance of a very unconventional script, Love and Information, by Caryl Churchill for their performance assessment task. They’re also honing their written analytical skills by crafting paragraphs that examine how actor preparation and dramatic techniques have been used to create meaning and engage an audience. Keep up the fabulous work!

Year 12: These amazing students are coming to the end of their Drama schooling. They’ve devised comedic Group Performances that explore the consequences of science-experiements-gone-wrong, and a twisted game-show between the 7 deadly sins (minus 2!) Not only have they spent significant time crafting these, but students have also worked closely on developing an Individual Project that encapsulates their understanding of performance and design. 6 students are presenting monologues for their individual projects while 2 students have created original and theatrical costume designs for the plays Silent Disco and A Comedy of Errors. But wait, there’s more! Students are revising their study of four plays ahead of their written trial examinations. Good luck to these Drama students who will complete their formal HSC practical examination for performance in week 7. You’ve got this!

Visual Arts:

Year 7 Visual Arts - Self Portraiture - Finding Themselves Through Art

This term, our Year 7 Visual Arts students are discovering that a portrait can say so much more than "this is what I look like." Taking inspiration from artists such as Vincent van Gogh and Frida Kahlo, students have been exploring how colour, symbolism, and personal imagery can transform a simple likeness into a window into someone's inner world.

Students began by using their own silhouette as the foundation for their self-portrait, before being asked to explore their personal iconography — the images and motifs that feel uniquely "them." From there, they layered in meaning through the symbolism of objects and colour, making deliberate choices about what to include and why. The result is a body of work that captures not just how each student looks, but who they are — their personalities, passions, and the things that matter most to them.

It's a wonderful opportunity for students to build technical art skills while learning to tell their own story visually, often revealing sides of themselves that don't always come through in the classroom.

We can't wait to share some of these creative self-portraits as the unit progresses!

Year 8 Visual Arts - Building Big Ideas

Year 8 Visual Arts students have been thinking like architects this term, designing their own Guggenheim-inspired buildings. Taking cues from Frank Gehry's bold, sculptural approach to architecture, students explored how form and structure can communicate an idea, not just serve a function.

Rather than simply copying a style, students were challenged to develop a personal theme or concept to drive their design, using it to shape every decision — from the building's silhouette to the materials and details within it. The result is a series of imaginative structures that show students thinking beyond the traditional idea of a building, using architecture as a form of creative expression.

This project gave students a hands-on understanding of how architectural design can bring an idea to life in three dimensions, strengthening their spatial thinking and design skills along the same lines as an architect.

Pictured left to right: Damian Cooper, Jessica Sawyer, Ethan Bailey, Zac Greenford, Caylah Gregory, Alexander Cleary, Shanttel Hodges and Indiana Stanik.

Pictured left to right: Colby Hewitt, Laila Davidson, Kendric Calvo, Juliano Kamel, Briannah Strauss, Preston Rudd, Jaxon Sinclair and Amalia King.

Year 9 Visual Arts - Modernism Investigation to Contemporary Communication

Students in year 9 have been studying Modernism, creating works of art that reflect a chosen Modernist art movement with a personal theme. This term, students are creating a visual mode of communication, The Zine (A zine is a small hand made art book, a published art magazine, and or individual prints. A zine is usually a short self-published, self-distributed handmade book, expressing individual ideas and thoughts) Students are being taken through various workshops in creating artworks that fosters an idea/story, students are experiencing ‘how to build’ a work of art over time (over several lessons). Experimental workshops include, black out poetry, observational drawing, texture transfers and using your senses to create abstract works of art.

Year 10 Visual Arts - Surrealism

Year 10 investigated the 1920's Modernist art movement, Surrealism; exploring the imaginative world of dreams, emotions, memories, and the unconscious mind. Students combined unexpected images, symbols, and visual techniques to create imaginative compositions that communicate personal ideas and interests.

This term, students have diverted their focus to urban art, and art with a social message. Students have chosen a cause that has significance to them, for example, domestic violence awareness. Students have been conducting research to gather a whole understanding of their cause and begin to develop representational designs to paint on wearable items, participating in communicating ideas, thoughts and feelings to a targeted audience.

Year 11 Visual Art - Exploring Identity Through Art

Year 11 Visual Arts students have been delving into the powerful visual language of Frida Kahlo, using her work as a springboard to create deeply personal artworks of their own.

Renowned for her unflinching exploration of identity, pain, and self-representation, Kahlo used symbolism, colour, and iconography to turn her self-portraits into rich visual narratives. Drawing on this approach, students have been developing their own Kahlo-inspired artworks, using personal symbolism to communicate elements of their own identity, experience, and inner world.

This project has pushed students to move beyond surface-level representation, encouraging them to think critically about how visual choices — from colour palette to composition to symbolic objects — can carry meaning. In doing so, students have engaged with key ideas from the Conceptual Framework, considering the relationship between artist, artwork, and audience in the creation of deeply personal work.

The result is a body of work that reflects both technical growth and a genuine engagement with art as a means of self-expression.

Pictured left to right: Brock McFayden, Kingston Falua, Kaiya Oluck-Hardes, Abbie Leonard, Joshua Pearce (top row). Kiara Rowsell, Shelley Majchrzak Grey, Amelia Burnes, Dhivyaa Letchumanan, Dakotah Hughes, Austin Sheppard and Issac White (bottom row).

SUPPORT CREATIVE ARTS

Creativity in Action

Our Support Creative Arts classes (S3, S6, S11 and S13) have been getting hands-on this term, exploring the vibrant worlds of graffiti, street art, and sculpture. Students have looked closely at how street artists use colour, line, and form to transform everyday spaces into bold, expressive works of art.

Building on this inspiration, students have been creating their own graffiti-style artworks and sculptural pieces, experimenting with different materials and techniques along the way. It's been a wonderful opportunity for students to develop their fine motor skills, creative confidence, and personal expression, all while having fun exploring a genre of art that's bold, colourful, and full of energy.

Exploring Landscape Art

Our S8 Creative Arts class has been exploring the world of landscape art this term, building both drawing and collage skills along the way. Students began by learning to draw in perspective, developing an understanding of depth, distance, and space within their artworks.

Building on these skills, students then moved into collage, creating their own landscape artworks using cut images from magazines. Combining texture, colour, and composition, students have enjoyed piecing together new worlds from found imagery, developing their creativity and design skills in the process.

Photography and Digital Media:

Year 9 Photography - Lights, Camera… Animation!

Our creative Year 9 photographers have taken a big leap into the world of stop motion animation! Drawing inspiration from a range of animation studios, including the stop-motion masters at Aardman Animations, students are writing, building, and filming their own mini movies — one frame at a time.

Students have chosen from a range of animation styles to bring their stories to life, including LEGO animation, whiteboard animation, and cut-out paper animation. Along the way, they're learning the patience and precision it takes to bring characters and objects to life frame by frame, from storyboarding their scenes through to building sets and filming.

We can't wait to share their animation magic with you soon — it's big storytelling on a small scale, with maximum creativity.

Year 10 Photography - #ComboPhotos in the Making

This term, Year 10 Photography students are building their Photoshop skills while exploring the creative possibilities of digital art. Students have been closely studying the work of artists Stephen McMennamy, Barbara Kruger, and David Hockney, examining how each uses photography and digital media in unique and thought-provoking ways — from Hockney's fragmented "joiner" photo collages to Kruger's bold text-based imagery.

Taking inspiration from these approaches, students have been challenged to create their own #ComboPhotos — imaginative digital artworks that combine two images into a single, surprising composition. Through this process, students are refining their technical editing skills while developing their ability to communicate ideas visually

in creative and unexpected ways.

Year 11 photography - Vanitas in the Viewfinder

Still life has taken centre stage for our Year 11 Photography students this term. Given a range of prompts and themes to respond to, students have designed and built their own unique displays, using each arrangement to explore contemporary ideas through considered choices in composition, lighting, and subject matter.

It's a genre that rewards patience and control — every object, angle, and shadow is a deliberate decision — and students have used that control to

say something individual with their work.

Alongside this practical focus, students are building their theoretical understanding through three artist studies and by analysing, reflecting on, and evaluating their own photography. Together, this blend of hands-on creation and critical thinking is setting students up with the foundations they need for senior photography.

Year 12 Photography

Our Year 12 Photography students are now focused on their Individual Project, where they are consolidating all the knowledge gained throughout the HSC course. Each student is researching, conceptualising, creating, and curating their own body of photographic work, with submissions ranging from still photography to video or a combination of both. As part of this process, students have submitted a project proposal and presented it as a milestone checkpoint. They are also undertaking independent research to develop new skills and are gaining inspiration by analysing photographers’ practice through the Conceptual Framework. This unit encourages independence, creativity, and critical thinking as students prepare to showcase their final body of work.

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