Jeremy Taylor shares his view on why February is very far from being a month for hibernating if you are one of the students involved in the arts at Abingdon or through the OX14 Learning Partnership. Frantic February the bard on 22 March in which Anur, Arran and Rex took part. Earlier in the term, they joined 13 pupils from Fitzharrys for a joint drama workshop with OA and professional actor Max Hutchinson, who delivered a superb introduction to the demands and joys of performing Shakespeare’s work. Those who prefer film have been travelling far and wide to capture footage for films they hope to complete later this year. Students from Abingdon, Larkmead and Fitzharrys are working on 19 new films whose subjects range from a pioneering engineer who’s developing more efficient electric car motors to the young jockey who’s hoping to ride the next Gold Cup winner. Particularly exciting is the work of 2 Larkmead students who are striving to make a film on the theme ‘filming otherness’ for an international project called Le Cinema cent ans de jeunesse. Ben and Aaron have made their focus the Marcham Astronomy Group, whose weekly meetings in the village hall to gain a better understanding of the heavens have presented a delightful contrast between familiar everyday lives and the unknowable vastness of the skies above. Meanwhile, Abingdon’s claim to be a training ground for the next generation of media moguls continues to gain credibility via the activities of the Oxfordshire Academy of Broadcast Journalism. This programme of workshops led by professional broadcasters Olly Hogben and Blythe Lawrence is open to students from schools across the OX14 Partnership and provides an introduction to the core areas of media work - text-based, sound and visual media - platforms. Students have worked on creating blogs, podcasts and video items which they will share in the summer term. Of all the months of the year, February is perhaps the least likely to stir the heart. Whilst autumn months are famously the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, and summer's charms have long been trumpeted by poets, few of us get excited by the prospect of February - a time of freezing temperatures, frosty skies, and seemingly endless rain and flood. Many dream of nothing more than curling up by the fire and sitting it out until Easter. Unless, that is, you're one of the many involved in arts activities across the town of Abingdon... in which case February is often a frantically busy and exciting time. Major drama productions grace the stage of the Amey Theatre in the first part of the month, followed immediately by GCSE and A Level practical exams. In other areas of the arts, there will be many who have been relishing an extra February day (courtesy of the leap year) in order to have more time in which to write, film, rehearse or edit work in preparation for the challenges ahead. This term, for example, has seen Year 9 pupils from several OX14 schools taking on the ultimate acting challenge of preparing an extract from Shakespeare for the first town-wide celebration of 20 April 2024 in Partnership Abingdon School
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