Festival of Ideas inspires

This week was our annual Festival of Ideas, an extraordinary week of school where students were given the opportunity to discover new passions or interests outside of the curriculum. This year’s theme was Alternative Perspectives and students have enjoyed a week of creative and challenging activities culminating in a day ‘off-timetable’, turning their hand to international diplomacy, entrepreneurship, journalism, Chinese tea making, trading, laser cutting, law, Star Wars and more!  

Throughout the week, students have enjoyed Music performances around school, sports like wheelchair basketball, the Summer Concert and on Wednesday evening, we hosted this year’s Festival of Ideas Conference. The Lower School production of James and the Giant Peach performed to a sold-out audience on Thursday and Friday night, and students were on trips or volunteering as part of Friday’s final Field Day of the year! And relax…

Other highlights include: 

Creative Writing Showcase 

Mr Lydon, Teacher of English, says, “On Tuesday the budding bards in the Sixth Form showcased their own original writing at the Creative Writing Showcase. This event always provides a snapshot of how vibrant creative writing is at Trinity, with extracts of plays, short stories, novels and poems shared with a captive audience.  

This year we witnessed excerpts from Ethan Thorne’s plays Trauma and 3 Birds, 1 Stone, before Tom Baker shared two of his original prose pieces, ably delivered by Rob Wilding and Barney Sayburn. Rob and Barney performed extracts of their own plays too. All the writers were excellently assisted by star turns from Dhyan Ruparel and Bailee Sheldon, whose nuanced performances brought the words to life. It is with a heavy heart and other cliched expressions that we bid Barney and Rob farewell – they have been stalwarts of the Trinity Creative Writing scene for a number of years and have promised to stay in touch to let us know about their future creative endeavours. 

Festival of Ideas Conference 

We were delighted to welcome speakers: Maggie Alphonsi MBE – the face of international women’s rugby, Dr Alana Harris – a renowned academic from KCL, specialising in Modern British Social, Cultural and Gender History, and alumnus Ian Johnson (Class of 1986) – founder of IJPR which has launched global publicity campaigns for some of the biggest TV shows. They all tackled the idea of Alternative Perspectives based on their own experience and in their respective industries and took questions from the audience. The event was very well facilitated by Upper Sixth student Gabriella Thomas, who returned to school for the occasion. Thank you to all our academic scholars, parents and other guests who attended/ 

Trinity Extension Award 

We also announced the winners of the new Trinity Extension Award (TEA) which takes the place of the previous Lower and Middle School Project and FAFY, an independent research project allowing students to delve into a topic of their choosing. 

The Lower School winner was First Year Hamish C who completed a project ‘Don’t Fence Me In’, all about land ownership in the UK. Judges were very impressed by Hamish’s first-hand research and bibliography. The Middle Show winner was Fourth Year Naku D, whose mathematical exploration was very well-researched with an impressive bibliography. 

Mr Halliday, Festival of Ideas lead, said, “Well done to all students who submitted a project for the Trinity Extension Award. The standard was very high, and some were exceptional. They highlighted the diversity of thought and interests across the school and were a pleasure to read. It was also lovely to see students taking intellectual risks and pushing themselves beyond the confines of the curriculum. They are developing skills that will facilitate them succeeding not just at GCSE and A Level but at university and beyond.”